Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/447

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ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS


work in the form of a ring-brooch (see fig. 12), which is an elaborate example of a type represented at High Down, Sussex.[1] Near the point of the pin are two birds modelled in the round and working on pivots, while a third is fixed to the base of the pin. The ornamentation An image should appear at this position in the text.Fig. 12. Engraved Silver Brooch, Sarre ({srac consists of a pearled border and two bands of a repeating animal design, much in the style of certain bracteates (pendants of gold-foil) found in Scandinavia[2] and belonging to the same period. A disc-brooch of bronze engraved in the same manner, with a blue glass cabochon setting in the centre, was found in the King's Field, Faversham, and is now in the national collection.

Traces of occupation during Roman and Anglo-Saxon times might well be expected at the point where the Wantsum, which made Thanet an island, reached the northern coast of Kent. A green lobed glass[3] of the usual type, now in Canterbury Museum, was found at Reculver, and other objects are recorded by Roach Smith,[4] but without details of their discovery. They comprise fragments of a keystone brooch about ⁠1+3/4 inches in diameter; sceattas, a gold coin and another, mounted as a pendant, of Magnentius (350-3), but the locality of the last is uncertain. At the other mouth of the waterway that once cut off Thanet from the mainland, sporadic discoveries were made near Richborough before 1849. During the draining of Goss-field, at Cup Street near Goldstone, nearly twenty graves with flagstone covers were found containing skele- tons, weapons, urns, coins, glass vessels and beads, but here again no systematic exploration was undertaken. One brooch[5] was of base silver (as pi. ii. fig. 2), and there was a remarkable buckle of Keilschnitt work that may with some confidence be assigned to the fifth century, as being directly connected with the late Roman style, an example of which also occurred on the site.

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  1. V.C.H. Sussex, i. 344.
  2. Especially one from Lyngby, Randers, Jutland; Atlas for Nordisk Oldkyniighed, No. 129; B. Salin, De Nordiska guldbrakteaterna, pp. 54, 103.
  3. Pag. Sax. pl. ii.
  4. Richborough, Reculver and Lympne, pp. 157-8, 213-4; pl. vii. 18, and pl. viii. figs. 2-10; perhaps also fig. I (p. 2I0). Bzttely, Antiq. Rutufinæ (1745), pi. vi.; Bibl. Top. Brit. i. 7;, pi. iii. (coins).
  5. Pag. Sax. xxlx. 4; Richhboro', etc., pl. v.. figs. 1-6, p. 88 ; Jl. Brit. Arch. Assoc. v. 374; Arch. XXX. pi. xi. fig. I, attributed to Gilton in Ash parish, to which Richborough also belongs.