SPUR

A fragment of a post-medieval cast copper-alloy rowel spur. It consists of rowel box, neck and one of the sides; the other side, both terminals and the rowel and bar are all missing. The presence of iron oxide in the rowel box suggests that the rowel was made from iron. Further, the length of the slot up the spur neck at 13.5mm, together with the perforations which would have held the bar, suggests that the rowel would have had a diameter of approximately 17mm. Overall, the neck is 17.7mm in length and 7.3mm in width. With a thickness of 5.5mm it is ovoid in section. Unlike the surviving side, the neck is undecorated except for two raised transverse lines which demarcate the rowel box. The extant side has a flat hemispherical section. At the junction with the neck it is 11.3mm wide. It tapers to 6.4mm in the direction of the missing terminal. The side’s outer face is decorated with punched motifs: annulets and crescents. Five annulets form a floret, of which there are two: both are between two pairs of crescents. There is a further pair of annulets between the neck junction and the first crescents. Similar decoration can be seen on an example illustrated in Read (2001, 60, 65; ref. 502) which has been dated to the seventeenth century.