22 The History of the Spur 



other spur is much the same size. The sides are thin, and flat 

 inside and out, half an inch wide at the heel and gradually 

 narrowed without any rounding to three-sixteenths of an inch ; 

 the ends are beaten out to form an oblong with a square 

 perforation cut in each ; the point is five-eighths of an inch 

 in length, and in this specimen shows some attempt at 

 ornament. 



In the British Museum there is an iron spur which was 

 found by Dr. Behr while excavating some Teutonic graves in 

 the Russian Baltic Province of Livonia, together with spear 

 heads and other objects which are believed by him to be about 

 the first or second century a.d. An illustration of this spur 

 is shown on Plate 5, Fig. 3. The sides are thin and the heel- 

 plate is rather more than three-quarters of an inch wide ; the 

 sides, keeping flat, are narrowed to half an inch or less and 

 are then turned upwards to form a sort of hook, under which 

 a strap could pass to bind the spur to the foot ; the spike is 

 quadrilateral and is one inch in length ; the spread of the 

 sides is slightly more than two and a half inches. 



In few of these early spurs were the sides prolonged 

 forwards to anything like the extent to which they were at a 

 later period and to which they are now. Generally there was 

 merely enough length and spread to embrace the bare heel. 

 But this fashion began to change after the third century. Two 

 very interesting spurs were found, in 1845, in the old Romano- 

 British encampment on the top of Hod Hill, at Hanford, near 

 Blandford, Dorset. Here there is an ancient British circular 

 camp on the summit of the hill, overlooking the valley of the 



