ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS vessel, and fragments of skull seemed remarkably thin and delicate for an adult. Only two teeth were found and these were very small, and in many instances a tiny land-shell had found its way among the bones. Nothing of any intrinsic value had been deposited with the ashes, but several small articles, all of personal or domestic use, were recovered from the urns, comprising two bronze knives with tangs for the handle ; four pairs of small iron shears ; two needles and four pairs of bronze tweezers ; two fragments of glass vessels, one stamped with the letter R ; many bone discs' with shallow holes, not buttons but perhaps draughts- men ; a coarse clay net-weight ^ ; beads of glass and pieces of bone combs. The find is recorded in Norfolk Archaology, vol. xii. Nothing can be said with certainty about several isolated discoveries in the county, briefly and perhaps inaccurately reported many years ago. Thus at Narborough about 1600 Blomefield relates that ' several human bones and pieces of armour were dug up at the foot of a lofty artificial hill,' ^ which may have been an Anglian grave-mound ; and indeed Gough calls a number of little hills along the coast by North Creake the burying-places of Danes and Saxons.* Again, the 'Roman' urns dug up at Lynford * in 1720, and the small urn with bones and ashes found oh a pavement of flint stones fifteen years later at the same place, suggest an Anglian burial on such a floor as that already mentioned at Castle Acre. There is, however, no doubt as to the Anglian character of the finds next to be recorded. ' In a field of Old Walsingham, not many moneths past, were digged up between fourty and fifty Vrnes, deposited in a dry and sandy soile, not a yard deep, not farre from one another : not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described : some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jawes, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion. Besides the extraneous substances, like peeces of small boxes, or combes handsomely wrought, handles of small brasse instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kinde of opale.' * In Sir John Evans' edition of Sir Thomas Browne's classic is a note to demonstrate the Anglian character of these objects which are not of rare occurrence, such as thread-boxes, crystal beads or spheres and bronze tweezers. In the British Museum are two urns from the Townley collection which may possibly have come under the eye of the author of the Hydriotaphia. About half a mile from Elmham, on rising ground west of the Beteley road, many urns (as fig. 15) of coarse earth have been found at a spot called Broom-close.' The situation is dry, with a sandy or gravelly soil, and the river flows in the valley at no great distance. The ware was rough and uneven but generally well-burnt, some pieces having indented
- Specimens from Pensthorpe are noticed below (p. 335).
- Another from Brooke, now in the British Museum, is noticed later.
^ History, vol. vi. p. 148. * Additions to Camden, vol. ii. p. 114. ' Blomefield, History, vol. ii. p. 263.
- Hydriotaphia, Ume Buriall, chap. ii. (1658).
' Blomefield, History, vol. ix. p. 491. 331
