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Description: | Three fragments of one or more small, Kentish, square-headed brooch(es). The largest fragment comprises a small portion of the head-plate panel and about half of the bow of a brooch. The head-plate has an incomplete and empty rectangular setting, probably for a garnet slice, set just above the centre of the bow. To one side of this a panel of moulded Style I relief ornament is just visible, comprising what may be part of an eye. The bow has a high-relief strip running lengthways down its centre. This appears somewhat worn, but has some small triangular indents towards the headplate end which may have carried niello. Part of the hinge plate survives on the reverse, with some traces of iron adhering, probably from the brooch spring/pin mechanism. There is a jagged break across the headplate and a transverse break across the middle of the bow. These breaks appear sharp and unworn, again suggesting recent damage.The closest parallel in Leigh's corpus would appear to be a Series II brooch from the cemetery at Chessel Down on the Isle of Wight (Cd 4; Leigh 1980, pl.28). This has a very similar bow and a headplate with rectangular garnet setting just above the junction with the bow, flanked by Style I decoration. This would be consistent with items 5-6 below being fragments of the same brooch and, on balance, this seems likely.L. 13.94mm, W. 14.59mm, T. 9.1mm, weight 1.7g. The second fragment comprises one upper corner of a head-plate. The fragment has a single square setting inlaid with a foil-backed garnet slice. The garnet is damaged. A number of brooches in the Kentish square-headed brooch corpus have square garnets inlaid at the upper corners of the headplate, but the settings on the brooch from Chessel Down (Cd 4) referred to above appear very similar to this fragment, strengthening the likelihood that these fragments are derived from a single similar brooch.L. 9.91mm, W. 9.86mm, T. 2.08mm, weight 0.7g. The third fragment comprises the terminal and lower part of a foot-plate. The lower part of the foot-plate comprises one end of what would have been a lozengiform plate. Two ribs emerge from the raised border of the foot terminal, each carrying traces of niello-inlay. The foot-plate terminal is rectangular, with worn and rounded lower edges. Inside the raised outer edge is a rectangle of raised beading, within which is set a rectangular garnet-inlaid setting. The garnet, which is backed by gold foil, is damaged. The transverse break across the footplate is, once again, relatively unworn, with sharp edges, suggesting a recent break.This fragment does not match the terminals on the footplates of the brooches that parallel the other two fragments here discussed (all complete examples of these have drop-shaped garnet settings at their terminals), but is not dissimilar to the setting on the Chessel Down brooch which most closely parallels items 4-5. The ribs merging into a rectangular garnet-inlaid setting are very similar, although the Chessel Down brooch has a much wider rectangular panel at its terminal. Nonetheless, the balance of probability is that this fragment is also part of the same brooch. L. 13.4mm, W. 11.07mm, T. 1.8mm, weight 1.2g. | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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