Thomas Batemans Ten Years Diggings :: Archaeology Archaeological Essays

Thomas Bateman's Ten Years' Diggings Thomas Bateman at Brushfield, Derbyshire, 1850 On the 3rd of August, we opened a finely shaped barrow near Brushfield, upon Lapwing Hill, overlooking Cressbrook valley, measuring seventeen yards across and four feet high in the centre, composed of earth, with a few stones in the middle, where a shallow grave, about a foot deep, was sunk in the rock. In it lay extended the remains of a human body, so very much decayed as to be almost undistinguishable, but which we ascertained to have been deposited with the head to the west. Beneath the remnants of bone were many traces of light-coloured hair, as if from a hide, resting upon a considerable quantity of decayed wood, indicating a plank of some thickness, or the bottom of a coffin. At the left of the body was a long and broad iron sword, enclosed in a sheath made of thin wood covered with ornamented leather. Under the hilt of the sword, which like most of ancient date is very small, was a short iron knife; and a little way above the right shoulder were tow small javelin heads, 4 1/2 inches long, of the same metal, which had lain so near each other as to become united by corrosion. Among the stones which filled the grave, and about a foot from the bottom were many objects of corroded iron, including nine loops of hoop iron about an inch broad, which had been fixed to thick wood by long nails; eight staples or eyes, which had been driven through plank and clenched; and one or two other objects of more uncertain application, all which were dispersed at intervals round the corpse throughout the length of the grave, and which may therefore have been attached to a bier or coffin in which the deceased was conveyed to the grave, possibly from some distant place. The only specimen of a Saxon sword, which was the weapon of the thegn, previously found in this part of Derbyshire, was singularly enough found with the umbo of a shield on the same farm in 1828; thus indication the connection of a noble Saxon family with Brushfield in the age of Heathendom, the name of which is perpetuated in a document of the 16th century, preserved in the British Museum. On the same afternoon, we examined a mutilated barrow nearer Brushfield, called the "Gospel