ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 
orientated in the Christian manner, with the head laid at the west end 
with the idea of facing the eastern sky at the resurrection. It has been 
already observed that no such uniformity exists in the Kempston ceme- 
tery, and graves are found in various directions elsewhere in the county. 
Hence the conclusion seems inevitable that we have to do with a mixed 
population which used the same burial ground but buried their dead 
each according to his ancestral traditions. Brooches of West Saxon type 
found at Kempston, Shefford and Leighton Buzzard are evidence either 
of settlements from Wessex on those sites or of ready intercourse with 
the occupants of the upper Thames valley. Buckinghamshire has 
yielded similar specimens from several localities, and the conquest of 
Bedford rests on the same authority as the capture and occupation of the 
four towns in 571. Discoveries in the soil to this extent confirm the 
record of the Chronicle ; but if a West Saxon advance was possible 
under the escarpment of the Chilterns, it was also possible for immigrants 
from the eastern coast to gain a footing in the district. In addition to 
the fifth century brooches already described from Kempston, there may 
also be mentioned as indicating an early settlement in this part of Britain 
the peculiar jug-shaped cinerary urn discovered in the neighbouring 
county of Northampton at Great Addington." 
The late Mr. Grant Allen in a posthumous work ’* expressed his 
opinion that, though the West Saxons held what is now Oxfordshire and 
Buckinghamshire for a considerable time after their victory at Bedcan- 
ford, they do not appear to have made any permanent settlement in Bed- 
fordshire itself. ‘’This flat and fenny district was first really occupied by 
the Middle English, a tribe of Teutonic colonists who effected their 
entry into Britain by the Wash, and advanced towards the interior by 
the marshy basins of the Nene and Ouse.’ 
Where all is so problematical, it is idle to gainsay such a deduction 
from the county’s natural features; but the unmistakable West Saxon 
stamp of brooches found at Shefford, Kempston and Leighton Buzzard 
might serve as a still stronger argument in favour of its partial occupa- 
tion by that tribe before the spread of Christianity among them, and 
archeology suggests that they entered the district from the west and 
south-west. As already mentioned the urn-burials at Sandy, Kempston, 
Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard point to an Anglian connection, either 
with the Mercians of the midlands or with the inhabitants of East 
Anglia ; and another link in the chain that binds Bedfordshire to the 
Fen district has been discovered at Farndish in the extreme north-west 
corner of the county, near Irchester, Northamptonshire. In the British 
Museum are a number of amber beads from this site found about 1828 
with a skeleton in a bank which here forms the county boundary, and 
with them was a small bronze brooch of a peculiar type (see fig.) al- 
most identical with specimens from Soham, Cambs, and Kenninghall, 
Norfolk,’ in the same collection. Though no further details of the Farn- 
1 V.C.H. Northants, i. 242. 2 County and Town in England, p. 87. 
Pa 3 Another coincidence in this cemetery has been already noticed on p. 7. 
189 
