Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/434

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A HISTORY OF KENT 5 inches high, one with incised chevrons on the body, the other with a small foot and outline recalling a Roman pattern. Other similar remains were brought to light at different times in the village, and skeletons were met with at Southbank about the year i860. Fragile as they are, certain glass cups found for the most part in Kent were in all probability manufactured abroad and imported into this country. One pattern with constricted body and a small knob in the centre of the base is exceedingly rare in England, but about thirty were found on a farm at Woodnesborough at the end of the eighteenth century, and used at harvest- homes and on other special occasions by the farm-hands. A specimen of rich brown colour, with threads below the rim, is illustrated by Akerman.' Some idea of the distribution of such cups may be derived from their occurrence so far apart as at Herpes (Charente) and Envermeu (Normandy) in France, Selzen in Rhenish Hesse, and Oberflacht in Suabia, but the lobed vessels are also widely dispersed, and it is at present impossible to determine their place or places of manufacture. Before the Society of Antiquaries in 1894 Mr. Geo. Payne drew attention to the peculiar character of some relics of the Saxon period in the Maidstone Museum, which were presented by Mr. W. W. Cobb, and apparently came from Buttsole.' Bronze ornaments for the dress or belt were partly gilt and take the form of fish and birds or are purely geometrical," with sunk panels filled with engraved linear patterns or plaits in relief. There were the bronze mounts of one (or two) buckets, and a key with handle swelling in the centre (see fig. 7), while iron arrowheads, which are but seldom met with at this period, recall those from the Jutish cemetery on Chessell Down, Isle of Wight. Other iron objects were three swords much thinner, shorter and narrower than usual, as many shield-bosses, and other details ; and it is supposed that all came from the graves of three warriors whose nation- ality it is difficult to determine. A considerable number of relics were obtained in 1771 from graves disclosed in a sand-pit at Ash, on the high road from Sandwich to Canterbury. The graves contained coffins, and were distinct from each other, lying 4 feet deep, generally with the head at the west end. The majority were described and illustrated by Boys, to whose zeal and generosity Douglas refers in complimentary terms.° The list com- prises jewelled brooches of the circular and square-headed types, portions of a pair of scales with one leaden and seven bronze weights, two of the latter being coins of Faustina with sundry dots added : a crystal sphere, amethyst beads, girdle-plates, bucket with bronze ' Pagan Saxondom, pi. xvii. fig. i ; Nen. Brit. pi. xvii. fig. 6, p. 71. 2 The locality is given as Dover in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Land. xv. 180, but without conviction. 3 A fragment very similar to that on the left of fig. 6 is illustrated in Gen. Pitt-Rivers' Excavations in Cranborne Chase, vol. iv. pi. 258, fig. 15, and the resemblance noted p. 89. The locality is there given as Buttsole, near Eastry (see above, p. 351).

  • History of Sandwich, part ii. (1792), p. 868 (3 plates) ; most of the objects are in the British and

Canterbury Museums; see also Proc. Soc. Ant. ist ser. iv. 334. ^ Nen. Brit. p. 26, note » ; for illustrations, see pi. vii. figs. I, 3 ; pi. xii. and pi. xxiii. figs. 3, 5.