AXE

Iron axe. Length: 155mm; width of blade: 43.3mm; thickness (butt): 40.6mm; mass: 710g. Triangular longitudinal section. Socket with rounded ends and straight sides (length: 42.3mm, width: 22.6mm). Curved wings projecting above and below the socket. In plan, the blade expands towards the cutting edge. One edge of the blade is broadly straight, and the other flares out. Corroded brown surface. A similar although larger axe is included in the: “London Museum Medieval Catalogue”, Ward-Perkins, 1940, number 4 (A13508), p. p56 and figure 12. Ward-Perkins comments that the “woodman’s axe” has retained a more or less stereotyped form since the Roman period, although medieval examples seem to be larger, often with a simple socket, and lacking a projecting hammer-end (ibib. P. 55). The axe recorded here probably dates from the Roman to the Medieval periods.