ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS with red or white enamel like the ground, or with a gem of some kind. All the Chesterton discs may possibly have belonged to the same bowl, as the second large one might have been fixed to the bottom inside ; but no traces of the thin bronze vessel remain, and there is no detailed account of the discovery. 1 This is much to be regretted, as further light on this subject would be most welcome to archaeologists. At present the evidence is a tangle of contradictions, and only a ten- tative conclusion can be arrived at in dealing with the Warwickshire specimens. Such enamelled mounts with or without the bowls have been found in eleven English counties, 2 and apparently only two specimens are known from Ireland ; a yet in spite of the occurrence of five in Romanized Kent out of a total of sixteen, and of their scarcity in Ireland, it is hard to believe that they were not imported from beyond St. George's Channel. Again, though one such bowl has been found in an east-and-west burial on Middleton Moor, Derbyshire, another had been placed near the head of a skeleton at the north end of a grave 4 at Barlaston, Staffs ; and though this would leave their Christian origin in doubt, the discovery of the Lullingstone bowl in Kent, and the constant occurrence of the disc-designs in the early illuminated manuscripts of Ireland, render their connection with the Church a practical certainty, while a negative proof is furnished by their absence from cremated interments. Assuming therefore, in spite of some indications to the contrary, that the bowls were made or utilized by Christian ecclesiastics, it may be conjectured that they were introduced into this country by the Celtic priests of the Scotic mission, to whom we owe the conversion of the greater part of England ; and if reliance can be placed on the accepted date of the book of Durrow, the enamels may be referred to the seventh century, when the earlier trumpet-pattern (fig. 8) was giving way to the more purely Christian treatment of the spiral (fig. 9). But even if all this be granted it still remains for the antiquary to specify the use of these bowls and to explain why they are found not only in the graves of men and women alike, but also with the arms and accoutre- ments of the pagan warrior in England of the seventh century as well as in a Norwegian grave-mound of the Viking period. 6 Ten miles to the south-west, where the Fosse Way enters the county by Halford Bridge, two separate discoveries have been made, but as the accounts are not very explicit and are devoid of illustrations, it is uncertain whether either of them should be attributed to the Anglo- Saxon period. In November 1790, three skeletons were found lying from south to north, with a bed of limestone above and below, about 2 1 feet below the surface. The most careful burial of the three con- 1 Journal of Archtfological Institute, ii. 162 ; Journal of British Archaeological Association, iii. 282. 2 In addition, a small fragment from Morden, Surrey, in the British Museum, and a bird-shaped mount with part of bowl from Basingstoke, Hants. 3 The designs are reproduced on title-page of J. O. Westwood's Facsimiles of Angk-Saxon and Irish MSS.
- A plan is given in Jewitt's Grave Mounds and their Content!, p. 259.
6 A bowl of the same kind but without enamel is figured in O. Rygh's Norske Oldiager, No. 726. 259
