Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/223

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE.
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possessed no specimen, but that his collection comprised four gold rings, and one of bronze. To these he had added one of the iron rings, brought from Sierra Leone, where they are used at the present time as current money, being precisely similar in shape to the Celtic ring-money which is discovered in Ireland. He reported that three fine specimens of gold ring-money, recently discovered, are now for sale at a jeweller's shop in Cork; one of them has the central portion engraved, or grooved, and large flat plates at the extremities; the others terminate in the cup-shaped fashion: they are of the purest gold, and of considerable weight, the intrinsic value of the three rings being about 18l. It is probable that these singular relics will shortly be condemned to the crucible, unless some purchaser should be found who would rescue them from destruction.

Evelyn P. Shirley, Esq., M.P., exhibited several Roman coins found in the parish of Eatington, co. Warwick; a fibula, part of a buckle, and fragments of "Samian" pottery, stamped with the potter's marks SATVRNINI . OF. (officinâ) and SENTIA.M. (Senti a manu). They were found in Eatington Park.

The Rev. H. T. Ellacombe, of Bitton, communicated a rubbing from an early incised slab at Carisbrook, in the Isle of Wight; the slab narrows towards the feet, the lower portion of the figure is defaced. A representation of it was engraved by Charles Tomkins, in 1794. This slab represents an ecclesiastic, his head tonsured and bare, and in his right hand he bears a pastoral staff with a plain curved head. Possibly it is the memorial of one of the abbots of Carisbrook, where William Fitz-Osborn, who subdued the island, founded an abbey, which subsequently became a cell to the house of St. Mary de Lyra, in Normandy.

Mr. Hodgkinson sent for the inspection of the Committee an elaborately carved reliquary, or coffer, such as were called forciers, of the early part of the fourteenth century. It was purchased at Eu, in Normandy, and is supposed to have belonged to the abbey of St. Laurence, in that town.

Mr. Hodgkinson exhibited also a small carving in ivory, apparently of the fourteenth century, discovered on the site of Kilburn priory, Middlesex.

Mr. Charles E. Lefroy communicated, through Mr. Ferrey, for the inspection of the Committee, the remarkable collection of Merovingian, and other gold coins, discovered by him in 1828 on a heath in the parish of Crondale, in Hampshire. It consisted of one hundred small gold coins, varying in weight from 191/2 gr. to 23 gr., the value of each piece being about three shillings. With these were found two triangular gold ornaments set with rubies, attached to small chains, formed like those which are made at Trinchinopoly, and terminating with a hook and an eye. The discovery was made by Mr. Lefroy at a spot where some ridges, called the Rampings or Ramparts, apparently the traces of ancient tracks, are to be noticed on the old way leading from Blackwater to Crondale, in the vicinity of an earth-work, apparently Saxon, called "Cæsar's Camp," and of other ancient remains. A turf had been pared off for firing, in the usual manner, leaving a smooth "dished" surface, on which a little heap, apparently of