BUCKLE

Medieval buckle plate of folded sheet copper alloy. The plate is broadly rectangular in plan, tapering slightly in width from the attachment end before folding over creating a recess through which the frame would have passed. The folded metal on the underside extends 12.3mm past the fold roughly one third the length of the plate, narrowing to a trapezoidal end. At the fold there is a rectangular slot (4.0mm wide by 5.7mm long) for the pin. The frame and pin are missing. The attachment end of the plate has two circular holes punched from front to back for rivets, also now missing. There is a circular hole in the centre of the plate towards the frame end, through both the front plate and the folded section; they are now slightly mis-aligned. This rivet is also missing. The front of the plate is decorated with an incised rocker arm pattern across the top and bottom edges, ending at the curved frame recess at which point the pattern turns diagonally towards the central rivet hole where they end. There are traces of a white metal coating, possibly silvering or tinning on both the front of the buckle plate and on the front of the plate after it has been bent to the back.

Buckle plates of this style generally date from the Late Medieval Period (c.1350 to c. 1450 AD), and would have been attached to a single looped buckle, with separate pin. The majority of examples exhibit a recess on the edge of the fold for the frame to rotate, unlike our example which is unrecessed. .

Similar examples include WAW-2A6676 on the database and are illustrated in Whitehead (2003: 30) no. 173 and in Egan (2007: 90) no. 566 dated from the late 13th to late 14th centuries.