A HISTORY OF ESSEX exactly comparable, it may be suggested that the grip was enriched with this and perhaps other jewelled plates somewhat in the manner observed on a remarkable sword-handle of wood from Cumberland, now preserved in the British Museum. After an interval of six years, further excavation revealed the grave, the two ends of which were clearly defined in the gravel by a black line starting from the bottom and curving irregularly inwards through a vertical space of about 3 feet. At the extremities of the grave were rows of large flint nodules, and throughout the filling were numbers of flints, partly calcined, as well as fragments of Roman tiles. Somewhat east of the centre lay the fragments of a circular bronze pan about 13 inches in diameter, with a flat projecting rim and two swing-handles of iron working in loops of bronze. ,, Beneath was a mass of BRONZE PAN FROM ANGLO-SAXON GRAVE AT BROOMFIELD. .. , , , - _ folded woollen fabric of two distinct qualities, resting on logs of birchwood ; and it was evident that the pan had originally contained part of a cow's horn and four vessels that claim particular attention. Two (fig. 19) are of deep sap- phire glass, forming a pair that in shape, size and decoration are nearly identical with one found at Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, with a remarkable bronze bucket. 1 In the pan with the glass vases were two wooden cups turned on the lathe and furnished with thin rims of gilt bronze at the lips. Their exact form is uncertain, as the wood which was about one-eighth of an inch in thickness had not retained its shape ; but as the mouth was about 2 inches wide, and the body appeared to have been little larger, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these cups resembled one 2 found at Farthingdown, Surrey, which originally measured -2. inches at the mouth and was somewhat barrel-shaped, with broad gilt bands at the top and bottom embossed with a serpentine pattern. A very similar mount 3 was also found at Faversham in the King's Field, and is now in the Gibbs collection at the British Museum. As cups of this description are of rare occurrence, it should be observed that the examples given are from the south-east of England, in Kent and districts that must have been in communication with that kingdom from the first ; and another feature that points to contact with a higher civilization south of the Thames estuary is that the Broomfield wooden cups were turned on the lathe, a process that was hardly known outside Kent in the pagan period when Anglian potters were making urns to contain the ashes of their dead. 4 1 These are figured in colours by Akerman, Pagan Saxondom, pis. vi. xiii.
- Figured in Surrey Archceokgical Collections, vi. 113.
3 Figured in Roach Smith's Collectanea dntiqua, vol. vi. pi. xxvi. fig. I. 4 It is pointed out by Dr. Sophus MOller that during the Migration period in Denmark the lathe was used for wood but not for metal or pottery (Nordiscbe Altertumskunde, ii. 1 1 1). 322
