The Portable Antiquities Scheme

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Late Early medieval cast copper alloy stirrup-strap mount, Williams Class A, Type 5, 11th century. Almost complete but with missing flange. Pentagonal field set within a pair of tendril-like shapes which terminate in scrolls. At the apex the tendrils converge into a well-moulded upwardly facing zoomorphic head which supports the apex loop (diameter 3.8mm) and supplies a long handle-like projection. The head has large oval ears, shallow depressions at the eyes and a short square snout. The engraved decoration on the frame is very faint but consists of a border, and, in the lower square of the pentagon (apparently leaving a blank triangle above) a curvilinear design – difficult to discern but apparently a design of roughly symmetrical opposed lobes curving outwards from the centre of the mount. Two circular fixing holes (diameter 4.3mm & 4.5mm) at the lower edge. There would probably have been a flange on the reverse, projecting from the lower edge, but this is apparently broken away. No traces of iron rivets around the fixing holes. Dull brown surface on the reverse; the obverse appears to have been cleaned by the finder revealing yellow-brown metal. Length 54.34mm, width across head 9.11mm, width at shoulder 27.64mm, width at base 24.94mm, thickness across zoomorphic head 5.18mm, thickness 3.49mm, weight 20.89g.

See Williams p.40-42, fig 28, no.s 90-101 for other examples of Class A Type 5 mounts. None of these have the same curvilinear decoration at the centre of the frame. Williams notes the influence of Late Viking Ringerike & Urnes style decoration on many stirrup-strap mounts, and dates them “from the first quarter of the 11th century to around 1100 or not long after” (p.8).

• Williams, D., 1997. Late Saxon stirrup-strap mounts: a classification and catalogue York : CBA Research Report 111, pp8 & 40-42.

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Created: Friday 6th February 2009
Updated: Thursday 24th February 2011