A HISTORY OF NORFOLK practice of burying weapons and ornaments with their dead. The people of Sussex were the last of the Anglo-Saxons on the mainland to to be converted, and from 680 onwards it is fair to assume that the rites of paganism were gradually abolished by Christian teaching, so that the limit of date for pagan burials in Norfolk, at least among the Anglian population, is fixed on both grounds at about a.d. 700. Whether the date of these burials can be limited in the other direction depends on the accumulation of internal evidence and virtually on that alone, for written history is here unavailable, and tradition may be altogether mis- leading. Nor can much be gathered from the physical conditions which the early settlers would meet with in this part of Britain. In the pre- ceding chapter the emptiness of Norfolk as regards the Roman occupa- tion has been commented upon, and the sparsity of population attributed to its vast tracts of sandy heath and low-lying swamp. After the Roman withdrawal it is fair to assume that the maritime police became inadequate, and the coast of Norfolk, at any rate east of Brancaster, would thus be open to attack from the sea. There seem to have been few Romanized inhabitants on or near the sea-coast to check the immigration, and there is some warrant for the early occupa- tion of East Anglia as implied in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. On the other hand the two main entrances were doubtless guarded for a certain period after 410, and the desolate condition of the intervening region at the time would hardly invite a desperate effort on the part of the barbarians. Once however the gates of Norfolk were in Anglian hands a rapid increase in wealth and population might be looked for, as the Icknield and the Peddar's Way must for ages have been recognized trade routes, and these had not been wholly superseded by the Roman roads in Norfolk. To start from the north-west angle of the county, where one of the two main approaches from the sea had been commanded during the Roman period by the fort at Brancaster, evidences of cremation have been found at Sedgeford, a village about three miles south-east of Hunstanton. An urn with bosses round the body so characteristic of this period, is now in Norwich Castle Museum, and according to the catalogue prepared by Mr. Harrod in 1853 contained a quantity of burnt bones. A labourer engaged in carting from a pit found on the fall of some gravel from the side a line of urns standing mouth upwards and without covers, but the rest were probably destroyed. Near the park at Wormegay were found ' two most perfect Anglo-Saxon urns ' ; * and further south an unornamented urn, now in the British Museum, came to light some years ago at Wereham in a gravel-pit, 14 feet from the surface. In the spring of 1857 some workmen were raising a new bank along the boundary line dividing the parishes of Castle Acre and West Acre when they came upon several dark grey urns, varying in size and pattern, and filled with calcined bones. Many of these urns were de- 1 Eastern Counties Collectanea, 1872-73, p. 185. 328
