Archceologia. 471 



ARCH^EOLOGIA. 



The church of Bosham, near Chichester, has recently been the subject 

 of a number of paragraphs in the newspapers, on account of rather 

 extensive restorations which are being carried on in it. Bosham is a 

 place well known in history. Itwas a manor belonging to Earl Harold, 

 the son of Godwin, who afterwards became the last of the Anglo- 

 Saxon kings of England, and it was from hence that he sailed for 

 Normandy, on that eventful journey in which he was entrapped into 

 a fatal acknowledgment of the claims of Duke William to the suc- 

 cession of the Anglo-Saxon crown. The locality was connected with 

 Anglo-Saxon history by other circumstances belonging to still earlier 

 dates. It had a small monastic establishment as early as the latter 

 half of the seventh century, when Wilfred began here the conversion 

 of the South Saxons to Christianity. One of the daughters of King 

 Cnut is said to have been buried in the church of this monastery, 

 and he is supposed to have been so closely connected with it that 

 some "writers have conjectured it to have been the scene of that 

 beautiful scene of the Anglo-Danish monarch attempting in vain to 

 dictate to the tides of the ocean. But there are reasons for suppos- 

 ing that, if the story have any foundation in truth, its scene was not 

 the sea shore, but the banks of the river Thames, at Westminster, 

 where the later kings of Anglo-Saxon England had their palace, and 

 that King Cnut merely went out of his palace to rebuke the flattery 

 of his courtiers by showing them his inability even to check the 

 advance of the tide in the river. The church of Bosham has 

 recently been restored, and the course of the work has brought to 

 light many portions of the original Anglo-Saxon masonry which 

 were not previously known to exist. As many Roman tiles had 

 been used in the building, it is probable that the church, which must 

 have been one larger than it is at present, was raised on or near the 

 site of a Roman establishment of some kind or other. In this older 

 building one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon 

 masonry, the " long-and-short work of the angles, is found in abun- 

 dance, as well as some herring-bone work. Silver coins of the reign 

 of Edward I., with an old knife, were found in the drain of an early 

 piscina'. 



The lead mine on Shelve Hill, in Shropshire, known as the 

 Roman Gravels Mine, is remarkable for its bold remains of the 

 mining operations of the Romans on this site, which have been de- 

 scribed in a former volume of the Intellectual Observer (see Vol. i. 

 p. 295) . The modern mine is now worked by a company with great 

 success, especially since they have reached a depth beyond the 

 extent of the Roman workings. In their progress they continually 

 fall in with the shafts and galleries in which the Roman miners had 

 worked, and they found in them a few objects which those ancient 

 miners had left behind them. Some only of these have been pre- 

 served, and are now in the possession of the lord of the land, Mr. 

 More, at Linley Hall. They consist 'of spades, formed by splitting 

 very sound oaken timber, and of miners' candles. The latter are 



