Guilton Grave 16

Grave as before, and about three feet deep. No appearance of any coffin. Bones pretty sound. Two small iron buckles, like that described at No. 1. The blade of a knife, some small bits of iron, and many sherds of a large urn of black coarse earth, disturbed and broken no doubt in digging the grave for the person here interred, as at No. 2. These sherds were all carefully collected and put one within another, the largest sherds bottommost, and in the undermost, which appeared to be near one-half of the urn, there were about two handfuls of pieces of burnt bones. They were found carefully placed at the south-west corner of the grave, nearly a foot behind the head of the person here buried. The urn appeared to have had a mouth not above three or four inches wide, but a pretty capacious belly; it seemed capable of containing above a gallon. It had, before it was baked, been impressed by the tip of a finger or some such thing, in two rows, one row above another all round; the uppermost row was close to the neck, and the undermost row was about the middle of the belly; the bottom was not above three inches diameter.[1][1] It is not unusual to find in these burial-places the remains of Romano-British interments; and is evident from the care bestowed to replace them that the Anglo-Saxons respected the graves of the Romans and Britons as well as those of their own nation. In the cemetery at Ozingell was found a large British sepulchral urn; and Saxon graves not unfrequently found close to Roman burial-places. When in Saxon graves a skull is noticed between legs or by the side of a skeleton; or when bones and other remains beyond those of the regular deposit are met with, in such cases we may conclude that earlier graves, of which there are no external indications, had been dug into. - C.R.S.