BUCKLE

Incomplete plate and part of the spacer from a Medieval copper alloy buckle with integral forked spacer. The buckle frame is completely missing but one complete fork of the spacer and part of a second survives. The complete fork has a thickened end that formed the inner side of the buckle loop and part of the thinned bar for the pin to hinge on. After these remains of the buckle loop the fork is rectangular in section and thins where it would originally have been covered by the plates. It narrows in two steps before tapering to a pointed end. The other fork has broken before these steps and just the pointed end remains.

The plate consists of front and back plates riveted together and originally soldered to and covering the forked spacers. The plates are incomplete with the ends nearest the buckle frame missing to old breaks and some damage down one edge. It is therefore not clear it the plates were rectangular or tapered in width towards the buckle loop. The end opposite the buckle loop (the end to be attached to the strap) is concave with a circular apperture in the centre on the front plate from which an indented angled groove runs a short way down the plate. There are separate copper alloy circular rivets, one in each corner at this end, joining the front and back plates. The rivets have corroded to a different green colour, suggesting they are a different composition. The front plate is also decorated with rocker arm decoration in a line down each side and then outlining a shape, possibly a black letter U, V or n with the background filled with looser rocker arm.

The remaining fragment is 43.3mm long, 18.1mm wide and 3.7mm thick; it weighs 6.48 grams.

Egan and Pritchard (1991:78-82) illustrate a range of similar examples including no. 330 with rocker arm decoration on the plate and 322-325 all with similar cutouts at the attachment end. They date this form to the mid-14th to early 15th century and suggest the apperture and angled groove indicated the quality of the piece and the forked spacers, which were invisible when the buckle was complete.