Historical “bling”

Colin Smale explores gilded finds from fields and farmland around the county.

The stunning cross featured is believed by experts to be a Saxon Casket Cross, found on farmland in Waddingham. It is 50mm square and is gilded copper/bronze with a garnet decorating the centre. It would have adorned the end of a religious wooden casket, so imagine what that casket contained!

This is a rare discovery in Lincolnshire because according to experts in this kind of thing, this particular one was almost certainly designed and made in Ireland. Yet again we have an item not local but well-travelled! What is its story? How did it find its way to Lincolnshire? There are records of items looted from Ireland over the years, even from Saxon/Viking times, so perhaps that’s how it got here?

Was the square shaped item a gold medieval dress decoration or a button? 10mm square and found on farmland near to the Belmont transmitter tower, the consensus leans more towards a dress decoration because it would be a devil of a job trying to push that through a buttonhole. Although it looks beautiful in the picture, note the only remaining fragment of blue enamel at the 9 o’clock position – the only clue left to show that this was at one time a very colourful item. There would probably have been four blue circles with maybe white centres and a red disc right in the middle, but that’s just me now, imagining what it may have looked like in its prime. So often archaeology is all about imagining and questioning… What was it used for? Where did it come from? How did it get here, etc?

Lastly we have a Roman oval plate brooch, 38mm long and found at Barnoldby-le-Beck. It is gilt copper-alloy dating to the period AD200-350. The glass ‘centre-boss’ is missing, but this would normally be black and the pin and spring mechanism is still much like our safety pin mechanism as used today. A pair of rope-like mouldings decorates the flat panel surrounding the collar. Between the pair is a series of concentric circles. A raised rim runs around the perimeter and the surface has been gilded.

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