Page:VCH Warwickshire 1.djvu/310

 A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE Fairford and Wittenham, brooches of this type are only known to occur in unburnt burials, and are almost exclusively confined to an area in which cremation was not the ordinary practice. A stray specimen has indeed been found at Sleaford, Lines., 1 the only one from 242 burials, six of which were by way of cremation. With this exception, Marton, just south of Dunsmore Heath, and Norton, in the neighbouring county of Northants, seem to mark the northern limit 2 of these brooches, which from their occurrence chiefly in the Thames basin may be looked on as peculiarly West Saxon ; and the discovery of a specimen with a cinerary urn typifies aptly enough the intermingling of different tribes on what in all probability was for some time the borderland between them. A brooch five inches long of pronounced Anglian type terminating in conventional horse's head was found 3 with an iron spearhead and other objects on the site of a supposed Roman station on the Fosse road at Princethorpe on the north bank of the Leam. No further details were supplied by Mr. Bloxam, but an ornamented fragment of Roman pottery is figured on the same plate, together with what appears to have been the butt of a spear ; these may .',-'" """""r> possibly have been associated with the A-;-'.'.'. ".'I.'-'--;?- brooch and spearhead in a burial of -'.*"">--.".*_""*" "T_---7"."V * the Anglo-Saxon period. Though common enough in the eastern coun- ties, this class of brooch is not other- wise represented in Warwickshire, and may be regarded in connection with the few instances of cremation in this county as indicating the presence of a certain number of settlers or tempo- rary occupants of the Leam valley who were more closely related to the Anglians of the north and east than to the inhabitants of mid-England. On the same highway six miles to the north, traces of the Anglian site of cremation have also been found at Brinklow, 4 and the urn here figured is from the glebe land there. Ten miles to the south at Bascote, and about three miles from the Fosse Way, Saxon spearheads, a javelin or two and a knife have been found in quarrying for limestone, but no further particulars have been recorded. 6 Westward beyond the Roman road, the site of the supposed Saxon cemetery at OfFchurch flanks the direct road to Long Itchington, south of the church ; and graves have been found as at Longbridge in 1 Archtfohgia, vol. 50, p. 388. 1 Two brooches, said to be of saucer shape (Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, p. 484), were found at Driffield, E. R. Yorks, but according to one account (Collectanea Antique, ii. 166) were originally filled with enamel and belong to another category. 8 Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua, i. pi. xix. p. 37. * Bloxam, Monumenta Sefulchralia, p. 59. 6 Journal of British Arch<tolo&cal Association, xxxii. 465. 256 CINERARY URN, ERINKLOVV.