Anglo-Saxon Romsey
The Evidence in the Landscape
The Anglo-Saxon Barrow Cemetery on Breach Down, Kent
Anglo-Saxon buckles and jewellery found at Breach Down, now in the British Museum.
Illustration by Lord Albert Conyngham of artefacts found during his excavation of barrows on Breach Down in 1841, published in Archaeologia XXX, 1844. Most of these objects can be identified in the British Museum’s collections.
The First General Meeting of the British Archaeological Association was held at Canterbury in September 1844. It included an excursion to view the opening of Saxon barrows in the park of the new association’s President, Lord Albert Conyngham, at Breach Down. The illustration, published the following year, gives a good indication of the weather, but not of the participants - around 200 ladies and gentlemen viewed the excavations while sheltering under their umbrellas from the rain. The finds from the eight barrows opened that day included knives, spearheads, shield bosses, beads and, in the burial of a child, toys,' the evident offerings of parental affection'. Conyngham opened a further eight barrows on Breach Down the following week. The finds made by Conyngham were later purchased by the British Museum, at which time he was known as Lord Londesborough.
During the final year of my course in Early Medieval Archaeology at UCL I wrote a dissertation on the finds from Breach Down in the British Museum. I am now preparing a report based on the dissertation and my subsequent research. The photos and the drawings of the finds all date from 1977. I am continuing to update the inventory and catalogue. A discussion of the site and a bibliography will follow. PDFs of the work so far are available for:
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Changing views of Breach Down - 1840 to 1977.
The grave-goods recovered from the barrows on Breach Down date the majority of the burials to the 7th century, with the cemetery possibly continuing in use into the early 8th century. The range of artefacts is typical of the rich cemeteries in East Kent. Jewellery includes a garnet disc brooch, a gold bracteate and a gold disc pendant decorated with a cross. Three copper-alloy cross pendants and a pin with a cross head suggest their owners were Christians. A mounted bird’s claw and a cowrie shell were amulets, an indication of continuing pagan practices or unease with the new religion. Drop-shaped amethyst beads were found in several graves, including one with a necklace of 18 beads - the largest number of amethyst beads in any single Anglo-Saxon burial. There were also two globular crystal beads, many glass beads and some amber beads. A set of linked pins, two pins joined by a chain, is a 7th-century female fashion accessory, as are the two girdle hangers or chatelains. Silver wire rings, mainly used as components of a necklace, were common throughout the 7th and into the 8th century.
The little copper-alloy figure of a man (E1), 5.5 cm in length, is the most enigmatic object that was found on Breach Down. It was exhibited at a meeting of the British Archaeological Association in 1848 and was said to have been picked up near the tumuli. It had probably been overlooked during the excavation of one of the barrows. His eyes were drilled after casting and, when found, were filled with ‘red stone or paste’, probably glass or enamel. A rather idealised illustration from 1848 seems to show him wearing a hood. This interpretation ignores the detail that shows his hairstyle - his hair is parted down the middle and lies flat against his head and he appears to have a ponytail. The head is separate from the body - the figurine has been described as a pin and sheath, used as an amulet or possibly a phial containing a liquid or medicine. It is actually in two pieces because it was damaged, and repaired, in antiquity. A hollow in the neck was probably a casting fault, a gas bubble in the metal. The head broke off and was reattached to the body with a metal dowel.
There are several cast metal figures that are similar in date and appearance to the one from Breach Down. The two female figurines were found in Suffolk, b. at Halesworth and c. at Eyke. (Lisa Brundle (2020) Exposed and Concealed Bodies: Exploring the Body as Subject in Metalwork and Text in 7th-Century Anglo-Saxon England, Medieval Archaeology, 64:2, Fig. 7). One has a ponytail like the male figure from Breach Down. The other is described in the article as wearing a pleated skirt and ‘a long veil that falls to the feet’. Could this be long hair hanging down her back? In 1839 a preserved head of hair was discovered inside a lead coffin beneath the floor of Romsey Abbey. The sex of the person has not been determined, but the burial has been radiocarbon dated to 895-1123 - late Saxon or early Norman. The individual had long, plaited hair.
The presence of a suspension loop on the little man from Carlton Colville, Suffolk shows that it was made as a pendant. It is made of silver and partially gilded, but looks an unlikely piece of jewellery, more probably an amulet. Recent research has identified the Cerne Abbas Giant as a Saxon depiction of Hercules. In their paper on ‘The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context’ authors Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos compared the ‘tear drop’ face of the giant with the Carlton Colville figure, the man on the Finglesham buckle and the face on the Sutton Hoo sceptre. The Breach Down man with his round eyes is a closer match.