Thomas Batemans Ten Years Diggings :: Anglo Saxon Essays

Thomas Batemans Ten Years DiggingsBenty Grange, Derbyshire, 1848May 3rd,- It was our just fortune to open a barrow which afforded a more preachy collection of relics than has ever been discovered in the county, and which surpasses in interest and frame hitherto recovered from any Anglo-Saxon burying place in the kingdom.The barrow, which is on a farm called Benty Grange, a high and bleak locating to the right of the road from Ashbourne to Buxton, near the eighth milestone from the latter place, is of inconsiderable elevation, perhaps not more than two feet at the highest point, but is beam over a pretty large area, and is surrounded by a small fosse or trench. About the centre and upon the natural soil, had been set the only body the barrow ever contained, of which not a suggestion besides the hair could be distinguished. Near the place which, from the presence of hair, was judged to retain been the situation of the head, was a curious assemblage of ornaments, which, from the peculiarly indurated nature of the earth, it was hopeless to remove with any degree of success. The most remarkable are the smooth-spoken edging and ornaments of a leathern cup, about three inches diameter at the mouth, which was modify by four wheel shaped ornaments and two crosses of thin silver, stick on by pins of the very(prenominal) metal, clenched inside. The other articles found in the alike situation consists of personal ornaments, the chief of which are two circular enamels upon papal bull 1 3/4 diameter, in narrow silver frames, and a third, which was so far decomposed as to be irrecoverable they are enamelled with a yellow interlaced dracontine pattern, intermingled with that peculiar scroll design, visible on the same class of ornaments that figured in Vestiges p.25, and used in several manuscripts of the VIIth Century, for the get of decorating the initial letters. The principle of this design consists of three spiral lines springing from a frequent centre, and each involution forming an additional centre for an extension of the pattern, which may be adapted to fill spaces of almost any form.