A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
vided with illustrations, so that there is now little opportunity of testing 
their accuracy or identifying relics said to be of Anglo-Saxon date. 
There is little internal evidence of such origin in several sharply pointed 
tines of deer-horn found at Bedford Castle about 1854, with a number of 
arrowheads, beads of vitrified paste and of agate or carnelian. ‘The tines 
measured about 34 inches in length and were thought to have served as the 
heads of missile weapons ; but though the beads may well have been of 
the glass and amber usually found in Anglo-Saxon graves, such primitive 
lance heads as those described suggest a much earlier period. In 1881 
a number of Roman and Saxon remains including pottery of both 
periods are said to have been discovered in Castle Lane, on what was 
thought to be the site of a Roman villa,’ but nothing that can be held 
to confirm the testimony of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with regard to 
Bedford is recorded till 1896, when workmen employed in making a 
road through a field (now Russell Park), presented to the town by the 
Duke of Bedford, found three skeletons placed in a line east and west, 
the feet being towards the east. Close to two of the skulls lay spear- 
heads of a common type, and a few yards south of the bodies was found 
an iron sword’; this was of the ordinary two-edged kind just a yard in 
length including the tang, with a uniform breadth of 2 inches. The 
site is near Newnham, three 
quarters of a mile east of the 
county town on the north 
bank of the Ouse, and 50 
yards from the river. The 
skeletons were 34 feet below 
the surface in a bed of river 
alluvium, but though the sur- 
= ——— Mi, rounding soil was carefully 
Bonz Comp, Beprorp. sifted, no further relics of the 
(4 size) period were discovered.’ This 
would not be surprising if, as 
is alleged, it was on this site 
that the Danes were repulsed 
from Bedford in the days of 
Edward the Elder, and these 
were the remains of burghers 
slain in action. The burial 
of weapons and ornaments with the dead would by that time be unusual, 
as the Church discouraged the practice. 
At the end of 1887 excavations for a malting in Horne Lane dis- 
closed two bone combs, one of which at least belongs to a Danish type, 
perhaps three or four centuries later than the battle of 571. They were 
Dousite Bone Coms, Beprorp. 
(4 size) 
1 Fourn. of Arch. Inst. xi. 295. 
2 Building News, 7 October, 1881. 
3 These are now in the Council Chamber at the old Harpur Schools, Bedford. 
* Report of Mr. J. Gwyn Elger, local secretary, in Proc. Soc. Antig. xvi. 114. 
186 
