ANGLO-SAXON 

 REMAINS 



THE history of the county in pre- Norman days is detailed enough to 

 explain the absence of any Anglo-Saxon remains dating from the 

 pagan period. After pointing out that the West Saxons were 

 already Christians when they reached the west country. 

 Prof. Freeman in 1873 said of Exeter that whatever the exact date at 

 which the city first became an English possession, it was with the driving 

 out of the Welsh inhabitants under Athelstan (926) that it first became a 

 purely English city.^ Later in the same century this stronghold on the Exe 

 was the chief bulwark of western England during the renewed Danish 

 invasions of Athelred's reign, and it is no doubt to our Danish period that 

 the only relic to be noticed here must be referred. 



In 1833 the bronze sword-guard here illustrated was found below 

 the foundations of the house of a plumber named Downe, in South 

 Street, Exeter. It has been 

 inadequately published,^ and 

 deserves special notice, not only 

 as the only relic of its kind 

 from the county, but also for 

 its intrinsic interest. The de- 

 sign, a pleasing variety of the 

 fret or key-pattern, is some- 

 what different on the two faces, 

 one of which has in the centre 

 an interlaced triangle that is of 

 frequent occurrence in the 

 Viking period, both here and 

 in Scandinavia. In itself the 

 ornamentation can only fix the 

 date within somewhat wide 

 limits, as it is one of the 

 commonest motives on stone 

 monuments ' and illuminated 

 manuscripts in our islands, 



from the beginning of the eighth century — the date of the Lindisfarne 

 Gospels — to the Norman Conquest. More precision might be expected 



' Arch. Journ. xxx, 309. 



' W. T. P. Shortt, Sylva Antlqua Iscana, frontispiece No. 5 (inaccurate drawing) : a grotesque interpretation 

 of the inscription is given on p. 143. 



' Allen and Anderson, Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, pp. 340-359. 



373 



Inscribed Sword-guard of Bronze, from Exeter (^). 



