BRIDLE BIT

Cast copper alloy bridle bit in two pieces with a cheek ring mount and two links from the center of the bit. The mount is made up of a square plate that is 28 mm long and 29 mm wide and 3 mm thick, inlaid with red glass to about half of its depth. The plate is mounted onto a circular ring which is 23 mm in diameter, 14.2 mm wide and 6 mm thick. Below the ring is the beginnings of the attachment bar that is circular in section and 12 mm in diameter and 3 mm deep, so that the whole mount is 29 mm in height. The red glass inlay and patina on the mount both survive well. The upper face of the mount is decorated with a raised S-curve or coil and within the 'S' there are three circular roundels, 6 mm in diameter, in a vertical row, inlaid with red enamel, all within a circular border with the red enamel behind the 'S'. The two links that are interconnected have different profiles, one being circular, 25 mm in diameter and 9 mm thick, and the other more ovoid, 27 mm long, 20 mm wide and 8 mm thick, with a more bulbous outer edge that is 10 mm thick. They both have collars but the round link does not extend any further while the ovoid link has a bar that extends to a length of 21 mm beyond the collar and is sub-square in section, 10 mm by 10 mm thick. The links are more corroded, but patina survives well on the outer surface of both of the links.

Megaw (1990) illustrates a similar S-curve with inlaid roundels and background from the Polden Hills hoard in Somerset on page 35, plate 26, which was deposited around the mid 1st century AD and a circular link with a mount on a horse bit from Ireland on page 37, plate 28. The motif in the design is very similar to two of the pieces from Polden Hill in the British Museum (1889,0706.77 and 78) and a first century AD date is most likely because of the two-dimensional mirror-style design (Julia Farley pers comm). The mount dates from the Pre-Roman Iron Age (c.300 BC - AD 43) using red glass in a simple design (Dr J.D. Hill pers comm).

Mansel Spratling, in his unpublished thesis for the University of London in 1972, Southern British Decorated Bronzes of the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age, illustrates a linch pin mount and terminal with similar S-curves with internal roundels in the Ashmolean Museum on page 402, fig.43, no.116, which is dated from the 1st century AD, and a horse bit with ovoid links and a flat mount perpendicular to a round ring from Hengistbury Head in Dorset on page 712, fig.53, no.152, which is dated from the 1st century AD.

See a drawn example of an Iron Age mount in the form of an S-curve that is attached to a circular ring, found at Standlake, Oxfordshire in http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol1/pp251-266 (figure 13).

On the database see SF-AA7B37 for a similar but circular mount with the same pattern and SF4715 for a similar three-link, double-jointed bit with a similar ring and mount at one terminal, which are both dated from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD.