J1g JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Whilst some excavations in connection with the erection of the 
new forts were being made at Stamford Hill, Turnchapel, Devon, 
in 1865, a group of graves was met with, the interments in which 
had been by inhumation. Some exceedingly interesting discoveries 
were made, and amongst other articles, such as broken urns, 
fragments of glass and iron, there were found portions of two 
bronze mirrors, some bronze armlets and fibula, with portions of 
ear-rings, &c. The mirrors are of much interest; they belong to 
the Bronze Period ; they are of late Celtic, not Roman type. One 
of them is highly ornamented on the back, whilst the face retains 
much of its original lustre. The ornamentation consists of lines 
of flowing scroll work, with cross hatchings in the interstices. 
The pattern is continued on the solid bronze handle, which is 
stated to have been found in another grave. This mirror is not 
circular, but has a somewhat elliptical form, in this respect 
resembling the bronze mirrors that have been found at Thebes. 
The Fort Stamford mirror is of the same style as one found at 
Birdlip, on the Cottiswold Hills, near Gloucester, in 1879, which 
was enclosed in one of three cists, similar in construction to those 
at Turnchapel.! 
Another mirror was found at Trelan Barrow, in the parish of 
St. Keverne, Cornwall, in 1833, in a grave formed of six slabs of 
stone set on edge—two forming each side, and one at each end. 
The ornamentation consisted of triangular spaces, alternately 
plain. Across the centre line are two circles enclosing smaller 
circles, and curvilinear lines in a style similar to that of the 
ornament of a collar-like object found at Balmaclellan, with 
another bronze mirror. The ornamentation resembles that on the 
Stamford Hill mirror.? 
Dr. Joseph Anderson says, ‘‘These mirrors all differ in their 
form and in the composition of their metal from Roman 
mirrors, and they differ in certain characteristics of their ornament 
still more widely from the Roman style. They are distinctively 
Celtic.” ; 
Director Mr. A. W. Franks, of the British Museum, after 
inspection of the Fort Stamford remains, remarks, in a note 
following Mr. C. Spence Bate’s description of the discovery, “I 
should be disposed to attribute the mirror from Plymouth to a 
1 Pagan Scotland, p. 182. 2 Ibid. pp. 128, 182. 
3 Ibid. p. 133. 
