Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/423

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ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS hollow moulding that is a constant feature of these bowls. Narrow bronze strips, forming a flat circle and decorated with sunk red enamel {champ/eve), have also been found with enamelled escutcheons in association with a bowl of this kind at Old Park, Dover ; *' but no perfect specimen has yet come to light. They were evidently suspended by three chains and meant to be sometimes seen from below, as enamelled discs have been found in the ' kick,' outside the base. The body of the bowl is in nearly every case of extremely thin metal, beaten out in a manner that must have necessitated many firings ; and the result is that they are found, if at all, in fragments. The designs on the escut- cheons, which are generally decorated with red enamel, are for the most part varieties of the Celtic trumpet pattern, seen at its best in the early Irish illuminated MSS.; but the Mildenhall specimens seem to be a barbaric version of the classical inclosed palmette and, in this respect, stand quite alone. Though many bowls or their fragments have been found in England, their date is not definitely fixed : but the period 550-650 suggested by some of the circumstances and associated objects may be provisionally accepted, though it leaves unexplained the occurrence of Celtic enamel and scroll- patterns which are generally supposed to have been abolished in Britain by the Roman occupation and to have survived only in Ireland where the Roman arms never penetrated. It may be added that one heart-shaped escutcheon of plain bronze, with the ring worn thin, has been found at Icklingham and probably belonged to a bowl of this kind, and a smaller lozenge-shaped specimen from Lakenheath, with a movable ring in the hook above it, may also be cited in illustration. Plain specimens like the former are known from Sarre, Kent ; and Barton, Cambridgeshire, while the latter somewhat resembles one from Faversham, Kent, in the British Museum. The sites of discoveries on the coast were probably some distance inland during the early Saxon period, and a valuable find at Bacton, in Norfolk, was indirectly due to the encroachment of the sea. In Suffolk the fate of Dunwich is at once recalled to the memory, but finds there are almost exclusively mediaeval. At Pakefield, just south of Lowestoft, an interesting discovery was made in 1758 on Bloodmore Hill, and recorded by the worthy Douglas." In a barrow a skeleton was found buried with a coin pendant of gold, and another, set with an onyx intaglio, strung on a necklet of rough garnets. The coin mounted in a hoop was of Avitus, who was declared Emperor in Gaul in 455, but resigned and became Bishop of Placentia ; on the reverse was conob, as in the Bacton pendant,'^* but the legend has yet to be explained by numismatists. The onyx intaglio was of Roman workmanship and represented a warrior armed with a spear beside a horse to right. Coins of the Lower Empire are also mentioned, including one of Claudius II (268-70), evidently inscribed imp. clavdivs p F AVG (oriental crown on head to right) and victoria avg (Victory flying to right with wreath and branch) ; and Douglas illustrates a crystal engraved with "* This and other examples not included in the late Mr. Romilly Allen's list (^Arch. Ivi, 49) are published in Proc. Soc. Jntiq. xxii, with illustrations. " Nenia Britannka, 8 n. and 82 (crystal, pi. xx, fig. 11); MS. Min. Soc. Antiq. viii, 318 (sketches) ; /Irch. xxxii, 65 n. " F.C.H. Norf. i, 341, figs. 2, za, on coloured plate. For conob see Wroth, Imperial Byzantine Coins (Brit. Mus.), p. xcix. 347