After the departure of the Romans from Britain, and the invasion of the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, we find history for a long period nothing but a tissue of traditions. We may believe that the Saxons occasionally, if not constantly, shod their horses; but whether in the same fashioned shoe that the ancient Britons and Gauls used, is a matter for doubt. Mr Syer Cuming[1] says he has seen a shoe very like in form that which Chifflet describes as found in Childeric's tomb, and which was said to have been discovered with Saxon weapons in Kent. It was of small size, very thin, and much oxidized. Elsewhere, at a later period, he remarks: 'The question regarding the employment of horse-shoes by the Teutonic tribes of Britain has received some slight elucidation. I feel confident that the Anglo-Saxons shod their steeds, and that they called the metal shoe calc-rond, i.e. rim-shoe; though Bosworth says the name signifies a round hoof; and my confidence is supported by the fact of the discovery of some horse-shoes in a Saxon burial-place in Berkshire. Mr T. Wills permits me to lay before you a horse-shoe, which there seems good reason to regard as of Saxon origin; it is about three inches and seven-eighths long, exceedingly thin, agreeing in this respect with the previously-mentioned horse-shoe found with Saxon remains in Kent, and the iron of which it is composed is of that peculiar ropy kind, so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon era. It is sharp at the extremities, has no calkins, and the six large, square nail-holes are cut clean through the substance, and not counter-sunk to receive the nail-heads. This curious specimen was recovered from the northern side of the
- ↑ Journal of the Archæological Association, vol. vi.
