Fig. 8. — Two Bronze Mounts of Sword- scabbard (?), Suffolk (^) A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK like one in the British Museum that was found by Lord Londesborough at Gilton, near Sandwich. The latter can be approximately dated by associated finds, and it is possible that the Tostock buckle also came from a grave that was overlooked. In Bury St. Edmunds Museum (Cat. Ill, 6i8, 619) are two oblong plates of bronze that probably belonged to a sword-scabbard (fig. 8). The exact site of their discovery is unknown, but special mention must be made of their elaborate ornamentation. The smaller piece has a doubled band twisted on itself and ending in a ser- pentine head and tail, recalling a more intricate specimen on a beaker from Farthing-down, Surrey^""; but closer parallels are published from Italy and Uppland, Sweden, and have been re- ferred on stylistic grounds to the 7th century.'^ Uppland has also produced a plate ornamented in the same style as the larger figure, with ribbon-like bodies of animals covered with trans- verse lines, and long jaws clasping the body at intervals." The home of this kind of interlacing has not yet been determined, but the two plates here illustrated were more probably made in Sweden than in England, and were doubtless brought over by a Scandinavian settler. At Moyses Hall is also preserved a series of iron spear and lance-heads, knives and strike-a-light, shield bosses of various patterns, glass beads, both variegated and plain dark blue, and the rim of a bronze bowl, from Fornham St. Martin, all having been deposited in graves with unburnt bodies about I 8 in. from the surface. The discovery was made in 1888—9, ^""^ ^^^ anti- quities presented to Bury by Mr. Walton Burrell."^ A short distance farther down the Lark valley, a cinerary urn, now at Ipswich (pi. iii, fig. 2), was found at Culford, and is peculiar as having a moulding below the lip, though the round and oval protuberances on the shoulder are common at the period. Two series of Anglo-Saxon weapons and ornaments from West Stow Heath were exhibited by Mr. Gwilt and the Rev, S. Banks respectively, to the Bury and West Suffolk Archaeological Institute in 1851, and were described by the secretary Mr. Samuel Tymms, who in the following year furnished the Institute with an illustrated report "*" of excavations on the site. In the interval the Rev. E. R. Benyon, the proprietor of the heath, had presented specimens to the Institute, which are now in the museum at Bury St. Edmunds. Stow Heath is a large tract of heath-land on the north side of the Lark valley in the parish of West Stow and on the borders of Lackford and Icklingham parishes. It consists of gravel or sand covered with a thin layer of vegetable mould ; and the discoveries were made in removing the soil for
- "' r.C.H. Surrey, i, 266, fig. 6, 6a ; Proc. Soc. Antiq. (ist ser.), iv, 93 (Sundlake, Ojcon).
" Salin, Die Allgermamsche Tkierornametitik, figs. 690, 555. " Salin, op. cit. fig. 549, also in style II (7th cent.). "* Earlier finds at Fornham St, Genevieve are mentioned ; Bury and W. Suff. Proc. vi, 53. '"' Proceedings, i, 304, 3 i 5, with eight plates.
