In the British Museum is a dagger from a barrow at Standlow, Derbyshire, with a bone pommel of nearly the same character as that from Leicester.
Perhaps the most highly ornamented dagger handle ever discovered is that which was found by Sir R. Colt Hoare in the Bush Barrow,[850] near Normanton, the lower part of which, copied from the engraving in “Ancient Wiltshire,” is shown in Fig. 289. A drawing of the whole dagger with its handle restored has been published by Dr. Thurnam.[851] The blade is 10½ inches long and slightly fluted at the sides, so that it is not, strictly speaking, a knife-dagger such as those hitherto described. It appears, however, best to call attention to it in this place. It lay with a skeleton placed north and south, with which were some rivets and thin plates of bronze, supposed to be traces of a shield.
Fig. 289.—Normanton.
At the shoulders was a flanged bronze celt, like Fig. 9. Near the right arm was the dagger and “a spear-head” of bronze. These were accompanied by a nearly square plate of thin gold, with a projecting flat tongue or hook, which was thought to have decorated the sheath of the dagger. Over the breast lay another lozenge-shaped plate of gold, 7 inches by 6 inches, the edges lapped over a piece of wood. On the right side of the skeleton was a stone hammer,[852] some articles of bone, many small rings of the same material, and another gold lozenge much smaller than that on the breast. As to the handle, I may repeat Sir Richard’s words: “It exceeds anything we have yet seen, both in design and execution, and could not be surpassed (if, indeed, equalled) by the most able workman of modern times. By the annexed engraving you will immediately recognise the British zigzag or the modern Vandyke pattern, which was formed, with a labour and exactness almost unaccountable, by thousands of gold rivets smaller than the smallest pin. The head of the handle, though exhibiting no variety of pattern, was also formed by the same kind of studding.
Fig. 290.—Roke Down. ½
So very minute, indeed, were these pins, that our labourers had thrown out thousands of them with their shovels and scattered them in every direction before, by the necessary aid of a magnifying glass, we could discover what they were, but fortunately enough remained attached to the wood to enable us to develop the pattern.” Some of the pins are shown in the figure below the hilt.
As Dr. Thurnam has pointed out, the ornamentation on a thin piece of metal (said to have been gilt), which apparently decorated the hilt of a bronze dagger, found in a barrow in Dorsetshire,[853] is of the same character, though produced in a different manner. This dagger is said by Douglas to have been “incisted” into wood. It is uncertain whether this refers to the hilt or to the sheath; but in several instances remains of sheaths have been found upon the blades of daggers, some of which have been already adduced, and others will hereafter be mentioned. Sir R. Colt Hoare, in a barrow near Amesbury,[854] found an interment of burnt bones, and with it a bronze dagger which had been “secured by a sheath of wood lined with linen cloth.” A small lance-head, a pair of ivory nippers, and an ivory pin accompanied the interment. In one instance the wood of the sheath was “apparently willow.”[855]
I am unable to guarantee the accuracy of the representation of a large dagger with its handle given in Fig. 290, the original having unfortunately been destroyed in a fire. I have, however, copied it from Dr. Thurnam’s[856] engraving, which was taken from a drawing by the late Mr. S. Solly, F.S.A.[857] It was found in 1845, in a barrow on Roke Down, near Blandford, Dorsetshire, and is thus described by Mr. Shipp:[858] “The blade is exquisitely finished, and the handle, which is ivory, as perfect and as highly polished as any of more recent date. It was found with two small bronze spear-heads at the bottom of a cist cut in the chalk, and covered with burnt bones and ashes; and over it was an inverted urn of the coarsest make, unburnt and unornamented.” In Mr. Shipp’s drawing the handle expands gradually to the base like the mouth of a trumpet. In a subsequent communication[859] Mr. Shipp describes the two spear-heads as of iron.