ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 
found 10 feet from the surface in a thick deposit of black mud over- 
lying a bed of peat, and representing, as Speed’s map shows, a wide 
ditch or creek which joined the Ouse a few yards south of the spot.’ 
The more perfect specimen (see fig.) resembles several from sites acces- 
sible to the Danish freebooters of the ninth and tenth centuries, such as 
York, the lower Thames and the Witham. It is 6 inches long, and the 
teeth, in five sections of ten or twelve each, are inserted in a tapering 
stem of circular section, the thickest end of which forms the handle. 
Iron rivets are used to keep the teeth in place, but the only ornament 
consists of wavy lines engraved round the butt and a rude design on one 
side. The second (see fig.) is a double comb, the teeth in sections as 
before and fastened with rivets, while the decoration takes the form of 
slanting lines engraved along the middle. 
At Shefford, the name recalling an important West Saxon site in 
the Lambourn Valley, Berks, two saucer brooches characteristic of that 
people have been found in an ancient cemetery.” The numerous vases 
and other remains from this site show however that the graves are of 
Romano-British origin ; and the saucer brooches, which were a pair 
with gilt faces and iron pins, are perhaps the only traces of early Saxon 
occupation. That these came from a grave is practically certain, as it is 
unlikely that two brooches of exactly the same pattern would have been 
accidently lost on the same spot and have remained together on or near 
the surface for thirteen centuries. 
A few relics from Leighton Buzzard * were presented to the British 
Museum by Dr. Edward Lawford, F.S.A. Leighton Heath was brought 
under cultivation about fifty years ago, and on it at that time, about a mile 
north of the town, were two conspicuous grave mounds (tumuli), both 
circular and surrounded with a trench. About a quarter of a mile 
distant, at a place called Dead-man’s Slode 
(Slade), there appears to have been an Anglo- 
Saxon cemetery where cremation was exclusively 
practised. Several burial urns of dark clay, 
hand-made and imperfectly fired, had been pre- 
viously discovered, with the usual decoration 
consisting of rows of bosses, and zig-zags inter- 
spersed with dots and rings, impressed in the 
soft clay ; and in 1880 sand was being dug in 
an adjoining pit when three ornaments were 
noticed which had no doubt once been interred 
: : i Bronze-citt Broocu, 
with their owner. A gilt bronze saucer brooch, Leicuton Buzzarp. 
just over 14 inches in diameter, with a central 
boss and design consisting of a five-pointed star (see fig.),‘ points to 
intercourse with the West Saxons; though the probability that the burial 
was by way of cremation leaves the nationality of the original owner an 
1 Proc. Soc. Antig. xii. 115. 
® Fourn. of Arch. Inst. vii. 71 (fig. p. 79) 3 see also a paper on Shefford by Sir Henry Dryden in 
Pub. of Camb. Antig. Soc. 4to, vol. i. (1845-6). 3 Proc. Soc. Antig. ix. 29. 
4 Compare one from Fairford, Gloucs., in Akerman’s Pagan Saxondom, pl. xix. fig. 8. 
187 
