The Antiquaries Journal

This paper reassesses the early Anglo-Saxon assemblage from Hardown Hill, Dorset. Wingrave excavated the objects in 1916 but apart from his 1931 report, and Evison's 1968 analysis, there has been little subsequent discussion. Despite a lack of human remains, the assemblage has been interpreted as representing an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery '“ our westernmost burial site by a considerable distance and one that pre-dates the historically attested seventh-century expansion of Wessex. The following typological reclassification and contextual analysis casts serious doubts on a funerary context. Instead, an alternative interpretation is presented that views the assemblage as a useful collection of metalwork, intended to be reforged and recycled, which was presumably deposited for safekeeping and never retrieved. Such a reinterpretation highlights the need for a critical reappraisal of material from older excavations. It also has implications for our understanding of post-Roman Dorset, and for the distribution of fifth- and sixth-century Anglo-Saxon material culture more broadly.

It has hitherto been supposed that, north of the Alps, the elaborate medieval mosaic work known as Cosmatesque was confined to Westminster Abbey. An example with glass tesserae, however, has now come to light from Wimborne Minster, Dorset. This paper explores the circumstances of the rediscovery there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of pieces of 'rich mosaic', describes the surviving fragment and compares it in style and function to counterparts in Rome and in the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster. It concludes that it dates, like those at Westminster, to the 1270s or 1280s. It suggests that it adorned the shrine of Wimborne's Saxon founder, St Cuthburga, and that the patron who commissioned it was most likely Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, lord of the nearby manor of Kingston Lacy and close associate of Edward i .