A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE known as a girdle-hanger, but of uncertain use (unless to work a primitive bolt), completes the list of discoveries at Saxby, most of which are in the possession of the Midland Railway Company at Derby. Access to the collection and permission to photograph specimens for reproduction were readily accorded by the engineer-in-chief, Mr. W. B. Worthington. Between Saxby and the county town lies the district that seems to have most attracted the earliest English inhabitants of the county, and there are traces at Twyford of British influence. Two trefoil escutcheons (plate I, fig. 2) of bronze with hooks at the top are in the museum at Leicester, with the base of a bronze bowl, perforated apparently for the rivet that attached a disc to the outside or inside of the vessel. The mounts are not a pair and are of unusual form, but their peculiar hooks indicate their use, for attaching chains to the rim which had a hollow moulding. Such attachments are generally circular in this country and enamelled with red and other sunk enamels in the peculiar eccentric patterns of Late Celtic art, and the recent find of a very early bowl so fitted confirms their British origin. The exact use of such elaborate bowls is still a mystery, but that the majority belong to the post-Roman period is evident, and two moulded annular brooches and part of a bucket of regular Anglo-Saxon manufacture come from the same site, though there is no record of the discovery. The two civilizations are again represented by objects found between Twyford and Burrough Hill and now at Leicester ; the bronze mounts of a bucket, of somewhat fragile make, are preserved along with a necklace of amber beads and two silver bars between 5 in. and 6 in. long, together forming a clasp, which may be of Anglo-Saxon origin ; some- what similar fastenings are seen on long chains found in Prankish graves of the eighth century. 374 Anglian settlement on this site is further indicated by a pair of silver-wire loops with the ends spirally coiled, like specimens from Beeby in this county and from Kenninghall, Norfolk. 88 They were doubtless attached to the dress and used for fastening it, like the modern hook-and-eye. Similar fastenings, but of bronze, were in use at least a thousand years earlier, as several have been found on Late Bronze Age sites in Switzerland and France. There is a bare record S9 of another discovery in the same neighbour- hood. In 1852 or earlier a skeleton was found in digging for gravel near Lowesby Hall, the residence of Sir Frederick Fowke. With it was a sword of ordinary type, a spear-head of unusual length, and an iron arrow-head. This last is of rare occurrence in this country, but if properly described may be compared with specimens from the Isle of Wight, 40 now in the armoury of the Tower of London. The bow was more frequently used by the Franks and Alemanni of Bavaria. Perhaps the only record of a find near Hungerton is to be found on the Ordnance map. 40 * The site is just north of the road from Keyham (which is | mile to the west), at the south-east corner of Foxholes Spinney. A spear-head and clasp were found, and probably belonged to an interment, but details are wanting. An iron spear and shield-boss found on the estate of Dr. Burnaby (of Greenwich) at Baggrave, with other fragments of iron and sepulchral relics, apparently from the same barrow, were presented to Rev. James Douglas, "* Boulanger, Le mobiller funeraire, pi. 45, fig. i. V.CH. Norfolk, i, 340, fig. I. " Proc. Sot. Antiq. (Ser. i), ii, 255. V.C.H. Hants, i, 388. 40 > 25-in. O.S. xxxii, 6. 236
