A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK A little distance up the river, at Bardwell, there was evidently an early cemetery, as Anglo-Saxon weapons, including the boss of a shield, were found there about 1846, though no further details are available." Ixworth, that comes next in order, has yielded a large number of antiquities belonging to various periods, but the best of the series date from the early days of the English conquest. A rarity in England is a primitive long brooch, repre- senting the evolution of the cruciform type in the 5th century. It was exhibited to the Bury and West Suffolk Archaeological Institute in 1859,*'- and its rarity is attested by the fact that only one other (probably from the Eastern counties) is known in this country.^' It has a comparatively high bow, and the square plate above it is still very unobtrusive, and can hardly have masked the spiral spring underneath, which originally had knobs at the end like that attached to the top of the plate. It is the parent of the long or cruciform brooches so often found in the Anglian districts of England and in Scandinavia. A fine pair, representing a later stage in the development of this type, was found on the shoulders of a skeleton in a meadow near the Cross House at Ixworth in 1868, and closely resemble another pair found in the county (pi. v, fig. i). They are peculiar in having circular grooves filled with red enamel (now much discoloured) in the centre of the panels above and below the bow.** Brooches of this kind, at least till the last stages of their evolution, were not decorated by any additions to the bronze, the varied mouldings being held sufficient for the purpose, and it is all the more surprising to find enamel added at a date when the side-knobs of the head were still separate from the head-plate, and so particularly liable to be lost when the wire-spring perished. These specimens cannot well be later than the middle of the 6th century, and seem to point to a lingering use of the red enamel so characteristic of the early British period. A bronze brooch from Ixworth (fig. 6) is difficult to date precisely, but may belong to the later Anglo-Saxon period, when round brooches were in fashion. The trigram is rather suggestive of late Celtic work, and should be compared with a specimen from London in the British Museum, likewise assigned to the pre-Norman period. Yjc. 6 Two remarkable jewels" from Ixworth have been Bronze Brooch, published morc than oncc, and were found about i860 by Ixworth (i) labourers in what appeared to be a grave, together with iron clamps and staples that may have belonged to a coffin. The first is a pendent cross of gold i J in. square, of the same type as one from Wilton, near Methwold, Norfolk, and had cell-work of garnets and turquoise (probably blue glass) covering the front in a step pattern, the back being a plain gold plate repaired by means of a patch, and having V-shaped ridges below the barrel-loop. The second jewel from this remarkable grave was a circular brooch, or rather the front of a brooch that had lost its bronze base and pin, perhaps " Warren collection ; drawings exhibited, Journ. Brit. /irch. Assoc, ii, 345. " Proc. iii, 40Z, fig. I on plate. *^ Arch. Joum. Ixv, 67. " Joum. Brit. Arch. Assoc, xxvii, pi. 12, fig. 2 ; the 'green enamel' mentioned is explained by the con- tact of the bronze, and possibly by the oxidation of the copper in the enamel itself. " Bui^ and W. Suff. Proc. iii, 296, figs. I, 2 ; Coll. Antiq. iv, 162, pi. xxxviii.
