Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/107

Rh eight corners, being canted off, form triangular facets, which bear no marks. This object is supposed to be of German origin.

A curious, and singularly beautiful, gold ornament, supposed to be of early British workmanship, was found in the year 1836, by a peasant girl, whilst cutting turf on or near Cader Idris, Merionethshire. Nothing was discovered with it, to assist in determining its date or use. The annexed representation is of the exact size of the original, communicated to the Institute by the Rev. R. Gordon, and the ornament itself is in the possession of the Rev. J. H. Davies, Sodington. Worcestershire. It consists of two small cups, elegantly ornamented with filagree, and connected by a slender central wire, on which slide two small disks, which serve as coverings of the cups. It has been conjectured that it had been used in place of a fibula or fastening of some article of dress.

The Rev. John Wilson, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, exhibited several fragments of encaustic tiles, which were found with other objects, including part of an iron spur and a silver penny of Edward III., in the parish of Oddington, in Oxfordshire, upon removing some old foundations in a large pasture field on the "Grange Farm." What the buildings had been was totally unknown, but as the traces of them were visibly marked by the inequalities of the turf, the removal of part of what was left took place in consequence of the tenant's wish to use the stones for other purposes. Mr. Wilson observed, that the discovery of these fragments of tiles afforded, in conjunction with other circumstances, a clue to that which has hitherto been a desideratum—the true site of the monastery known to have existed in the parish of Oddington.

Sir Robert Gait, Knight, Lord of the manor of Hampton, now called Hampton Gay, possessed, we are told, a fourth part of the village of Ottendun (villa de Ottendun); and going to Gilbert, abbot of Waverley, the earliest Cistercian house in England, desired and obtained leave to build an abbey, of the same order, in the village of Ottendun, which accordingly he raised at his own charge, and endowed it with five virgates of land, which made the fourth part of a knight's fee, and called it, from the name of an adjoining wood, Ottelie. The abbot and convent of Waverley added to the endowment one hide in Norton; and Editha, wife of Robert de Oyley, with her husband's consent, gave out of part of her own dowry in Weston, bordering upon Otmoor, that demesne which lay on the corner of their wood, and continued on without the intermixture