Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/426

 A HISTORY OF KENT and other female appurtenances. The only piece of jewellery was a blue glass pendant set in silver. The next site to be noticed lies immediately west of the Roman road between Canterbury and Dover, but still in the same neighbour- hood as the preceding. Mr. Thos. Wright described the exploration during 1844 of a number of barrows in Bourne Park (Bishopsbourne).' The operations were conducted in the presence of Lord Albert Conyng- ham, in whose park the barrows were situated ; Sir Henry Dryden, Mr. Roach Smith, and the narrator, so that there is every reason to suppose that the greatest care was taken in the excavation. A large barrow proved to have been previously rifled, but unmistakable signs of an Anglo-Saxon interment were noticed, and in the four upper corners of the grave, which measured about 14 feet in length, 6 or 7 feet in breadth, and more than 8 feet in depth, there was a small excavation in the chalk filled with the skulls and bones of mice, mingled with remains of seed. The same deposits appeared in several barrows there and on the Breach Downs. The second grave-mound was smaller and adjoined the last, scarcely rising above the surface. The body was almost entirely decayed, but seemed to have been placed in a wooden coffin. Near where the right foot must have lain were fragments of small hoops imbedded in wood, evidently the remains of a bucket of the usual type. The third burial proved similar to the first, the grave being of almost the same dimensions, but the small holes at the corners, which contained bones of mice, being at the sides instead of at the ends.^ At the foot in the right-hand corner had stood a hooped bucket measuring I foot both in height and in diameter at the base, but tapering upwards. Beside the right leg were found a shield-boss, a horse's bridle-bit, and a buckle, all of iron ; while on the right of the head, placed upright against the wall of the grave, was a thin bronze bowl richly gilt, with two drop-handles of iron, of a not unusual type in Kentish burials. The only other articles found in this grave were two discs nearly i inch in diameter, convex at the top, one being of bone, the other of the red Gaulish ware improperly called ' Samian.' These were probably counters or draughtsmen used in some game, and may be compared with those found at Sarre(p. 359)and elsewhere. No trace of the body could be discerned, and from the absence of the typical sword and knife, it was surmised that this was merely a cenotaph and that the body had been buried elsewhere. The barrows opened on this occasion all contained graves cut ap- proximately north and south, the head towards the south, and it was observed that almost all graves at Bourne and on Breach Downs had large flints at the sides and both ends, possibly used to fix a covering over the body before the grave was filled in."* Two other grave-mounds, » The barrows examined here by Faussett in 1771 {hiv. Sep. pp. 95-100) were of much earlier date. Plan in Arch. Journ. i. 254, fig. 2. Ibid. i. 380.