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of Magnentius; some rivets, a knife, an iron ring, and a
small bronze buckle, were also taken from this grave.
Draughts or counters are of rare occurrence in Saxon graves. These vary a
little in size and shape: all are circular and flat-bottomed, but some
nearly conical, others but slightly convex. A pattern of little double
circles, dotted in the centre, is on the upper side of most of them. Many
had decayed into fragments, and the number of those found tolerably
perfect being forty- five or fifty, I should judge the original
quantity to have been probably about sixty.
Mr Bateman records a similar discovery in a barrow opened by Mr.
Carrington, near a place called ‘Cold Eaton’, in Staffordshire, in the
year 1845. Here, in a deposit placed in a circular hole about eighteen
inches in diameter, were found "a quantity of calcined bones, some
fragments of iron, parts of two bone combs, and twenty- eight objects of
bone, like button-moulds. The
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latter objects were flattened hemispherical
pieces, mostly with dots on the convex sides; on some were dots
within amulets. They varied from half an inch to an inch in diameter,
and had generally eight, nine, or ten dots each."1
He thinks that they were probably used for a game of draughts, as
draughtsmen have been found in Scandinavian tumuli, and assigns them to
the Danes or the Saxons. Those which he describes, however, had all been
burnt: with these at Sarr burial only has been used, and the
accompanying relics are, it will be observed, of the same character as
those of the neighbouring graves.2
No. VII—Some clench-bolts or double-headed rivets, found near the left
side.
1 ‘Ten Years’ Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave
Hills,’ p. 181.
2 In another grave, opened here in 1864, we found a second set of some
forty of these counters. They were deposited in a hole to the right of
the grave. Two dice were found with them.
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