REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
Survey of the Lakes gives us a magnificent specimen of the bulbous 
penannular fibula, such as elsewhere has been found in Viking graves 
with tenth century coins. This brooch was of silver, weighing 25 
ounces, and variously described as having a ring 7 or 84 inches in 
diameter and a pin 21 or 22 inches in length. An almost identical 
brooch is said to have been found in a field near Penrith in 1830; it 
was exhibited in Carlisle 1859 by Mr. J. Teather, Alstonby. The third 
alluded to above, and known as the Brayton fibula, was found in a fish- 
pond at Brayton Park some time before 1790, when it was mentioned in 
Pennant’s Your to Scotland. It was originally—only a fragment was 
recovered—a flat penannular brooch of silver, ornamented with an inter- 
laced triquetra ; and though different in form from the Dacre brooch, 
like it resembling brooches found in Viking graves. With it was found 
a silver hook, weighing 2 ounces and 42 inches in length. We may 
hazard a guess that this was the bent pin of the brooch. 
The Kingmoor amulet ring, of which the runes have been men- 
tioned, was of gold, weighing nearly 15 pennyweight. Another ring is 
mentioned by Stephens (O/d-Northern Runic Monuments, iii. 218) as found 
somewhere in the north of England, and owned in 1870 by Mr. Robert 
Ferguson. ‘This seems to be an imitation in copper of the Kingmoor 
ring. The Aspatria gold armlet with its runes has also been men- 
tioned ; it was found in the ditch of a hedge somewhere within the parish, 
and at Beacon Hill was the tumulus with incised slabs and gigantic 
warrior buried with his arms, which has been described by Chancellor 
Ferguson earlier in this volume. This interment was more probably 
Viking than Anglian, because by the time the Anglians penetrated into 
Cumbria they were Christianized, and would not be buried in heathen 
fashion ; but the Danes and Norse at first were pagan. The same may 
be said of the Hesket hoard, which was found in 1822 in a tumulus 
near the Court Thorn, and is now in Tullie House. It included an iron 
sword, with pommel and guard complete, but bent up and broken across, 
as in many Scandinavian graves ; an engraved pattern is still visible on 
the guard—a braid of three straps, each of three strands. ‘There was 
also a shield-boss, an axe, a lance-head, a dart-head and a curved knife ; 
a spur, snaffle and buckle ; a hone, and a bone comb and bone objects 
which may be mountings of the sword-sheath, with engraved patterns— 
two plaits of three strands each and a simple twist of two strands. Among 
the stones of the cairn were bits of querns ; one of them of the dark grey 
volcanic rock from Andernach, used here by the Romans. 
The snaffle found at Hesket recalls a bridle-bit found at Birdoswald, 
and exhibited in 1859 by Mr. G. Head Head of Carlisle. It was 
described in the catalogue by the late Sir A. W. Franks and other dis- 
tinguished antiquaries as of ‘Old English type’; and such parts of a 
horse’s harness are common in Viking graves. 
In the Anglo-Saxon room of the British Museum is a sword- 
handle found in Cumberland and purchased 1876, the exact locality not 
stated. It is of wood, with gold filigree on bands of gold, and garnets 
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