460 The Grave-mounds of Derbyshire, and their Contents. 



Hoelw from which the Derbyshire name of Low is evidently 

 derived. The accompanying plan of a grave opened by Mr. 



Bateman on Lapwing Hill, 

 will pretty tolerably illus- 

 trate, this mode of Anglo- 

 Saxon burial. Beneath the 

 bones of the skeleton were 

 "traces of light-coloured 

 hair, as if from a hide, 

 resting upon a consider- 

 able quantity of decayed 

 wood, indicating a plank 

 of some thickness, or the 

 bottom of a coffin. At 

 the left of the body was a 

 long and broad iron sword, 

 enclosed in a sheath made 

 of thin wood covered with 

 ornamental leather. Under 

 or by the hilt of the sword 

 was a short iron knife ; 

 and a little way above the 

 right shoulder were two 

 small javelin heads, four- 

 and-a-half inches long, of 

 the same metal, which had 

 lain so near each other as to become united by corrosion. 

 Among the stones which filled the grave, and about a foot from 

 the bottom, were many objects of corroded iron, including nine 

 loops of hoop iron (as shown in the engraving) about an inch 

 broad, which had been fixed to thick wood by long nails; 

 eight staples or eyes which had been driven through a plank and 

 clenched, and one or two other objects of more uncertain 

 application, all which were dispersed at intervals round the 

 corpse throughout the length of the grave, and which may there- 

 fore have been attached to a bier or coffin in which the deceased 

 was conveyed to the grave from some distant place." Indi- 

 cations existed of the shield having been placed in its usual 

 position over the centre of the body, but no umbone was in this 

 instance found. The mounds are usually very low, frequently 

 not being raised more than a foot above the natural surface of 

 the ground. The earth was, as I have stated, usually ' ' puddled " 

 or tempered with water, and thus the body in the grave be- 

 came closely imbedded in a compact and tenacious mass. That 

 the tempering, or puddling, was accompanied with some 

 corrosive preparation, there can be little doubt, for it is a fact, 

 though a very remarkable one, that whilst the skeletons of the 



