A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE this description would not help to date the burial which on other grounds may be referred to the close of the pagan period in this part of England. In the museum of the county Natural History and Antiquarian Society at Warwick is a remarkable brooch l (fig. 6) found near the railway at Emscote Road, in the parish of St. Nicholas, Warwick. It is sometimes called the Myton brooch from the suburb of that name, and was discovered about 1852 by a labourer while digging a gravel pit, a section of which showed 2 feet of gravel overlaid by 9 inches of soil. It is supposed that there were several burials in the same locality, but no exact details are available, and all that is known about the find is that the brooch was associated with a skull, a large bead of crystal, and part of a silver ring ornamented with heart-shaped impressions made with a punch. The crystal * is of unusually large dimensions with facetted surface and a central perforation that seems unnecessarily large for stringing as a bead, and accords better with the common interpretation of these objects as spindle-whorls. In this instance the edges show signs of wear, but objects of this class were probably intended rather for use than ornament, and the utilitarian nature of clay specimens with openings of the same size is obvious. The Warwick Museum also contains five* enamelled discs* which are of special interest, as their origin and date are as yet unascertained. Reference to the plate will render a long description unnecessary, and a partial section (fig. SA) will show the character of the hook attached to the ring surrounding two of the five pieces, the third of this pattern being without the setting. The design (fig. 8) is the same in all three, consisting of a graceful combination of three flamboyant spirals or trumpet-shaped curves, the sunk ground having been filled with enamels of two or more colours, including red and green. These discs were used for attaching hooks to the side of a bronze bowl, the animal head just overlapping the rim and thus enclosing a loop perhaps for suspending the bowl by means of chains. So much may be inferred from extant specimens of the Anglo-Saxon period, 5 as well as from analogous mounts on Roman bowls or buckets of the fourth cen- tury. 8 It is also clear that it was usual to insert another enamelled disc within the foot-rim of the bowl, to be seen from below ; and the two larger specimens found with the others at Chesterton, on the Fosse Way, were doubtless so applied. The pattern in this case (fig. 9) consists of eight closely wound spirals connected round a centre which was filled 1 A coloured drawing is given in Akerman's Pagan Saxon Jam, pi. xx. fig. I.
- Figured in Journal of drchttologic al Institute, ix. 179.
8 Earlier accounts however mention only four. 4 Two are illustrated by kind permission of the hon. curators. 5 A list of known examples has been prepared by Mr. Romilly Allen, whose illustrated paper in Arch<tokga, vol. Ivi., should be consulted. 6 See for example Dr. Grempler's Der Fund von Sackrau (Breslau), pt. i, pi. iv. figs. 1,2; pts. 2 & 3, pi. iv. fig. 6. 258
