A HISTORY OF SURREY As somewhat of a rarity in English graves the angon may be connected with the three franciscas or axeheads, which again are more commonly found in Merovingian graves on the continent. In the British Museum are examples from the Isle of Wight, from Suffolk and London, but all are not of the same pattern. Strictly speaking, the francisca is an iron axehead for throwing, which has the centre of its cutting edge beyond the centre of the socket ; and to this type belongs at least one of the Croydon specimens. Other axeheads of about the same period have blades adapted for use at close quarters, extending below the socket,' or above and below like a halberd. 1 The francisca proper has been assigned to Prankish graves of the fifth and sixth centuries, as it occurs abundantly in Belgium, which the Franks reached at an early date, and very rarely in parts of France which were only conquered by them after a long interval. Graves of the seventh and eighth centuries in which examples have occurred are thought with good reason to be those of chieftains.* Among the antiquities preserved at Croydon is the upper part of a bronze bowl or cauldron belonging to a type of which several examples are extant from Anglo-Saxon graves. In the British Museum are three from Long Wittenham, Berks, while one is figured 8 from Linton Heath, Cambs, and another was found with Anglo-Saxon weapons and a bronze vessel of a different pattern at Sawston, in the same county, in 1 8 1 6. 4 A specimen of the same type is published s from the neighbourhood of Stade on the Elbe, a district which affords many parallels to our Anglo- Saxon antiquities. The rim generally measures 7 inches across, the body being somewhat wider and the bottom rounded. The lip is horizontal and turned outwards, unlike another common type of bronze bowl which has a thickened rim turned in at an angle. A semi-circular handle of iron is attached to two angular projections from the rim of the vessel, which was hammered out of a circular sheet of metal. The bronze tag of a girdle (fig. 7) is of unusual form, but an almost identical specimen is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from an interment in the Dyke Hills, Oxon, where it was associated with objects that resemble a bronze mount from Croydon (fig. 9), possibly belonging to a bowl. Two buckets about 4 inches high, mounted in the usual way with ornamented bronze bands but of less than average size, were also found. Their use is uncertain, but it is generally thought that they were originally filled with food offered to the dead, and a similar belief that refreshment was necessary beyond the grave may account for the presence of the elegant glass drinking cup exhibited with the buckets at Croydon. This interesting example of Anglo-Saxon glass (fig. i) is in excellent condition, and may in this respect be compared with another, of conical 1 Various specimens are figured in Archeeokga, xxxiv. 1 79.
- Barriere-Flavy, Arts Industrlels de la Gaule, i. 54.
3 Neville, Saxon Obsequies, pi. 16. 4 Figured in Arcbaologta, xviii. pi. 25, fig. 4. 6 J. H. Mtlller, Alterthiimer tier provinz Hannover, pi. xiv. fig. 109. 260
