BROOCH

An incomplete early Anglo-Saxon copper-alloy brooch, probably of small-long type. It was originally identified as a great square-headed brooch and so the description follows the normal model for this brooch type. Part of the head plate including the head plate frame and second panel and one wing survive, as does part of the bow. As well as being incomplete due to old breaks, now worn, this brooch is also distorted due to heat damage, especially along the edges of the head plate. This implies that it was originally deposited as part of an early Anglo-Saxon cremation. The head plate measures 29mm in surviving width and 25.8mm in height. No side or top knops survive. The headplate second panel can be seen faintly and is slightly raised. The bow is 19.2mm in surviving length and 15.7mm in width. It is not very arched due to the heat distortion. The faint traces of three longitudinal rectangular shaped mouldings can be seen in its centre. There is also a small rounded projecting knop on one side of the bow, c5mm in diameter. This is most likely to have been caused during the heat damage that this brooch has sustained. It does not appear to have been part of the original design of the brooch, especially as another knop does not occur on the other side of the bow. On the back face of the head plate there is a pin loop with the remains of an iron pin wrapped around it. Hines’s definition and classification of great square-headed brooches relies on their relief decoration, which this brooch does not have. It therefore seems safer to classify it as a small-long; there are several comparable examples of small-long type, including SF9041, NARC-EFD303, one from Mundford (Norfolk HER no. 11413), a pair from Great Chesterford grave 1, and several from Exning (West 1998, fig. 42). This brooch is similar to a slightly more complete fragment of headplate ad bow found close by (see SF-28C002). Both brooches were found in the same area as several other early Anglo-Saxon long brooches, both cruciform and small long, and other early Anglo-Saxon objects.