Page:VCH Staffordshire 1.djvu/250

 FIG. 4. IRON BUCKLE, WICHNOR, WITH SECTION ) A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE visible. Of pottery four well-preserved but very rude hand-made specimens are extant : they are quite devoid of ornament, and of different profile (see fig. 7), the base being more or less rounded as if intended to rest on soft earth, and the paste being soft and fairly smooth, of a brownish colour. The tallest measures 51 in., and the smallest 3&in., and they were all evidently used as accessory vessels, not as cinerary urns to contain cremated remains. Mr. J. O'Sul- livan states that no bones, weapons, or other anti- quities were found with the two urns that were first discovered. All had been buried in holes or trenches, about 3 ft. or 4 ft. deep and about 8 ft. apart. The other objects enumerated above were found subsequently, but not in association with the pottery. At Burrough Fields Farm, 18 south of Walton, bones and other objects not specified were found many years ago, and the name is suggestive of a cemetery, but no other remains are reported from this part of the Trent Valley, and it is highly probable that Needwood and Cannock Chase discouraged further advance in this direction, at least along the main stream : the pioneers may at this point have turned south along the Tame and founded Tamworth. Whether the lower valley of the Dove was occupied by these early settlers is not apparent ; but there is one site to be noticed in the angle made by that river with the Trent, and its proximity to the Roman road which here passes into Derbyshire is significant. During excavations for the original branch of the North Staffordshire Railway, through the rising ground on the south or Burton side of Stretton, several cinerary urns of reddish clay containing bones and ashes are reported to have been found and, as usual, broken by the workmen. At the same time a human skeleton, lying at full length with the feet point- ing south, is said to have been discovered near the village. Some years previously numerous urns containing ashes and bones, deposited about 3ft. below the surface, were exhumed from some gravel workings in a field near the house occu- pied by Mr. Gretton at the Beach. They are described as being made of soft reddish clay, and the mouth of each was closed with a small slab of sandstone. The author refers the pottery to the Britons rather than the Romans, and adds that the skeleton may be later. 19 Except that the pottery was evidently of poor quality and not wheel-made, one might be inclined to regard the cemetery as Roman, especially as it adjoined the Icknield Street ; but the sepulchral pottery of the Anglo-Saxons was a blackish or brownish grey, the larger (cinerary) urns being generally ornamented on the shoulder with incised lines and stamped patterns. No mention is made of such designs, but it is possible that red earth was still attached to the pottery when examined, and the ornamentation, if any, passed unnoticed. It should be remarked, however, that a few specimens found at Stapenhill were ' so highly w Trans. Burton-on-Trent Arch. Soc. iv, pt. ii, 81. " Wm. Molyneux, Burton-on-Trent, zi. 206 Fie. 5. BROOCH FOUND AT WlCHNOR <*)