Thomas Batemans Ten Years Diggings :: Anglo Saxon Essays

Thomas Batemans Ten Years DiggingsBenty Grange, Derbyshire, 1848May 3rd,- It was our veracious fortune to open a barrow which afforded a more interpretive collection of relics than has ever been discovered in the county, and which surpasses in interest and carcass hitherto recovered from any Anglo-Saxon burying place in the kingdom.The barrow, which is on a farm called Benty Grange, a high and bleak federal agency to the right of the road from Ashbourne to Buxton, near the eighth milestone from the latter place, is of inconsiderable elevation, perhaps not more than two feet at the highest point, but is blossom out over a pretty large area, and is surrounded by a small fosse or trench. About the centre and upon the natural soil, had been determined the only body the barrow ever contained, of which not a impression besides the hair could be distinguished. Near the place which, from the presence of hair, was judged to bind been the situation of the head, was a curious assemblage of ornaments, which, from the peculiarly indurated nature of the earth, it was unworkable to remove with any degree of success. The most remarkable are the cash edging and ornaments of a leathern cup, about three inches diameter at the mouth, which was alter by four wheel shaped ornaments and two crosses of thin silver, attach by pins of the analogous metal, clenched inside. The other articles found in the akin situation consists of personal ornaments, the chief of which are two circular enamels upon strapper 1 3/4 diameter, in narrow silver frames, and a third, which was so far decomposed as to be irrecoverable they are enamelled with a yellow interlaced dracontine pattern, intermingled with that peculiar scroll design, visible on the same class of ornaments that figured in Vestiges p.25, and used in several manuscripts of the VIIth Century, for the figure of decorating the initial letters. The principle of this design consists of three spiral lines springing from a frequent centre, and each involution forming an additional centre for an extension of the pattern, which may be adapted to fill spaces of almost any form.