Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/174



Mr. William Wire exhibited drawings of Romano-British and Middle-Age Antiquities, found in and about Colchester within the last few years. The former consist of a great variety of earthern vessels, lamps, enamelled bronze fibulæ, coloured clay and glass beads, buckles, bracelets, rings, bone pins, a fragment of a bone comb, a small bronze statue of Mercury, and an ornament in jet, on which is carved, in high relief, a representation of two winged Cupids filling a bag. It appears to have been worn suspended from the neck. The fictile urns and vases are numerous, and of a great variety of shape. Many of these remains were found on the site of the Union Workhouse, and between Butt and Maldon lanes, both of which localities, from the great number of skeletons and urns containing burnt bones which have there been discovered, were doubtless appropriated as burial places. The objects of Middle-Age art comprise a brass image of the Saviour, the eyes of which are made of a blue transparent substance, a small brass crucifix made in two parts with a hinge, so as to contain a relic, seals, and a tap, the key of which is in the form of a cock. Mr. Wire also forwarded a map of Colchester on which is marked in colours the various spots where Roman buildings, pavements, and burial places, have been discovered.

Mr. Thomas Bateman, jun., exhibited sketches of twenty-two crosses on grave slabs, discovered beneath the church of Bakewell in Derbyshire.

The Rev. Allan Borman Hutchins, of Appleshaw, Hants, communicated an account of the opening of a barrow, situated seven miles to the east of Sarum, near Winterslow Hut Inn Inclosures, on a point of land within a yard or two of the Idminster parish road, which leads into the Salisbury turnpike. Mr. Hutchins remarks:—"One foot and a half from the top of the barrow, towards the south, my labourers came to a strong arch-work composed of rude flints wedged together remarkably secure, without cement of any kind, with the key-stone. Having carefully removed the flinty safeguard, I was highly pleased with the view of the largest sepulchral urn, 18 inches by 18, the mouth of which was placed downwards and perfectly entire, with the exception of one of its massy handles, which, in my humble opinion, was accidentally broken by those who conveyed it to its appointed spot for interment, owing to the great weight of the new-made urn. The neck was ornamented within and without, in a handsome, though somewhat rude, manner, with a victor's laurel pattern. With the assistance of my two men, the urn was removed, and immediately some linen, beautiful to the eye and perfect for a time, of a mahogany colour, presented itself to our view, and resembled a veil of the finest lace. I made an accurate drawing of the linen which originally contained the burnt bones, of a yellow hue; underneath there were blood-red