I must not omit to mention that in the chamber where the bulk of the bones, pottery, shells, &c., were found, very large quantities of charcoal were also brought to light.

I may add that I at first much doubted the octagonal hole being a bath, but had an idea it might be the impluvium; but I have discarded that idea, as the principal rooms were, I think, in the portion destroyed. The piece of pavement destroyed was, I believe, 20 feet by 15; and, judging by the enormous quantity of material removed from the portion cleared in 1870, there must have been some important part of the building to the north-east of the portions which I have excavated.

The accompanying plan and sections (see Plate XXXVIII.) will explain the details and give some idea of the nature of the excavations.

The whole appearance, as one works on, is that of buildings that have gradually decayed; and the roofing-tiles are invariably at the bottom of the débris, as if the roof had fallen in first in the ordinary course of decay.

I have omitted to notice a very well-preserved pillar of oolitic limestone

Pillar of Oolitic Limestone, found in Roman Villa at Holcombe, Devon.
Height, 2 feet 10 inches.

found close tothe spot where the square stone or bracket, I have already mentioned, was discovered. It was in a remarkably good state of preservation, and so well finished that it gave the idea of its having been turned in a lathe rather than worked by hand.

Its total height was 2 feet 10 inches, and perhaps in its original state it may have measured 3 feet. The appearance of the stone is identical with that from the lower quarries in the island of Portland, from which place there would have been no difficulty in transporting it, but I am not able satisfactorily to establish the fact that the Portland Quarries, from which the fine-grained oolite is obtained, were worked at so early a date as the building of the Villa at Holcombe.

Believe me, my dear Sir,

A. W. FRANKS, Esq.

Very truly yours,

JOHN S. SWANN.

XXIV. On the Discovery of Anglo-Saxon Remains at Desborough, Northamptonshire. By the Rev. ROBERT SIBLEY BAKER, Rector of Hargrave.

Read March 30, 1876.

I have the honour to bring to your notice some remarkable antiquities which have been discovered in the village of Desborough, Northamptonshire, in February last, while digging iron ore on the property of Mr. and Mrs. Wise, of Woodcote, Warwickshire.

Desborough is a small station on the main line of the Midland Railway, a few miles south of Market Harborough, and is a place of some antiquity, and probably was the site of the mansion of the Desborough family, once its lords.

The discovery in question was made in a grass-field close to the village, about 300 yards east of the parish church, and within an area which would appear to have been an ancient encampment. A parallelogram of about four acres may be still distinctly traced by the fosses faintly furrowed in the pasture where left undisturbed by the diggers for ironstone, who will soon obliterate every vestige of it. The plan on the following page will give some idea of the spot.

Within the inclosure a number of ancient interments have been found; the bodies do not appear to have been buried in coffins, but only laid in pits sunk in the baring, as it is called, that is, the top soil, and three or four feet of disintegrated rock mixed with loam, which has to be removed in order to reach the ironstone rock.

The position of the graves is well marked in this baring, as they are filled up with black top-soil, thus appearing of a dark tint in the tawny-coloured mass. At the bottom of these dark patches the skeletons are generally found, very decayed and friable. Many of the graves are now empty, or contain but a few fragments of bone, with occasional pieces of coarse pottery and burnt stones mixed with the earth.

These sepulchral trenches are roughly made, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, and seem invariably to run east and south-west; where there are

skeletons the feet are to the east. I should mention that in all these pits appear traces of fire, in the shape of pieces of stone burnt red, either ironstone or a kind of freestone not found in the village. In one instance, a pit (found to be empty) was lined with clay at the bottom, in which were embedded stones set edgewise, and the stones presented traces of fire. Do these signs point to a transition from cremation to inhumation? In all about sixty interments have been found in the

A. Parsonage Garden. B. Garden. C. Spot where Necklace was found.

inclosure. One of these I had excavated in my presence, but nothing was found excepting fragments.

In two of the graves, however, have been discovered the very remarkable objects which I have the pleasure of exhibiting to the Society. This I am enabled to do by the courtesy and at the wish of Mr. Hickman, Manager for the Desborough Iron Ore Company. The beautiful necklace was found in one of the graves, and the rest of the objects in another. These graves were not far distant from each other, and both contained skeletons. The discovery took place in the second week of February, 1876.

I will now proceed to describe in detail the various objects discovered, some of which are represented in the accompanying engravings.

1. A bronze saucepan-shaped vessel made of very thin metal, with a rounded bottom and a broad flat handle, expanding towards the end into a circle; the edge of the handle is flanged or strengthened by a projecting ridge like the backs of some Eastern daggers; at the back of the handle there has been a small loop and ring by which the vessel could be suspended. Depth 3 in.; diameter of bowl 10 in.; entire length 16 inches.

It will be immediately noticed that this vessel is of the same character as those found at Irchester, in Northamptonshire, which I had the pleasure of exhibiting to the Society in January last (see Proceedings, 2d Ser. vi. 475), and which were considered to be late Roman.

a

2. Fragments of one of the bowls of a pair of scales. These are also of very thin bronze; two of the rings for suspension still remain; diameter, 12 in.

Weights and scales have been found in Anglo-Saxon graves, for instance, at Gilton, Kent, grave No. 66 of the Faussett Collection. Here both bowls were discovered, and the greater part of the bar; the weights were worn-out Roman coins, on which the Saxon goldsmith had made marks to indicate the weight of the pieces."

3. A spoon of base silver or white metal; length, 6 in. (Pl. XXXIX.) Both extremities are imperfect; the lower part of the stem where it meets the bowl has a singular expansion, suggested perhaps by the form of late Roman spoons, although the ornament (such as it is) on the upper end does not show any mark of classic design.

Although spoons have been found in Anglo-Saxon graves, they have rarely occurred, and these have generally had large bowls with small piercings in them; such is the spoon from Chartham, in Kent, now in the Ashmolean Museum, engraved in Douglas, Nenia Britannica, pl. ii. fig. 9, and in Akerman's Pagan Saxondom, pl. xxxii.; and another from Stodmarsh, Kent, now in the British Museum, engraved in Archæologia, vol. xxxvi. pl. xvi. fig. 5.

4. A hinge or clasp of a white metal similar to the spoon (Pl. XXXIX.), with engraved ornaments of a Teutonic character consisting of interlacing bands; on each portion are three prominent rivets; length 2 in. In this particular it resembles the plates of buckles both in England and on the Continent. See for

a An account of these with engravings has been published in the Transactions of the Northamptonshire Architectural Society. (Associated Societies' Reports and Papers, xiii. pl. 1, p. 39.)

b Roach Smith, Inventorium Sepulchrale, p. 22, pl. xvii.