Suffolk County Council Archaeology Service, Faye Minter, 2003-09-09 14:48:29
Title
Medieval harness pendant
Description
English: Copper-alloy horse-harness pendant in the shape of a shield. Within a border the centre of the shield is sunken for enamel. Most of the space is taken up with a counter-relief butterfly. This has an oval head with pointed top, with a sunken oval cell in the centre with two pellet eyes. To either side are long antennae, and below is the body which is made up of four cells to give a transversely striped effect. The wings have three rounded cells in each lower half, and three rounded cells below a long curved cell and a small triangular cell in each upper half. Above the shield is a complete suspension loop at right angles to the plane of the shield; this is quite worn internally at the top. All of the front of the pendant, except for the cells, is gilded, and there are traces of gilding on the reverse too. There are traces of red in the cells of the head, the body and the background, but it is very hard to tell if this is the remains of red enamel or a corrosion product which results from the contact between the copper alloy and the enamel. A gold butterfly on a red background was the badge (not, strictly speaking, heraldic) of the Audley family, a large and wealthy medieval family who had lands in Essex, among other places; but known Audley badges tend to have a very simplified butterfly which is not very like this example. Nick Griffiths has commented that the more detailed butterfly pendants (e.g. from Fornham All Saints, Suffolk and from South Petherton, Somerset) may either be the badges of an unrecorded family, or may be merely decorative with no 'heraldic' or badge significance.
Depicted place
(County of findspot) Norfolk
Date
between 1250 and 1400
date QS:P571,+1500-00-00T00:00:00Z/6,P1319,+1250-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1400-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Accession number
FindID: 34240 Old ref: SF8239 Filename: GOODERSTONEsf938sf8239.jpg
Credit line
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a voluntary programme run by the United Kingdom government to record the increasing numbers of small finds of archaeological interest found by members of the public. The scheme started in 1997 and now covers most of England and Wales. Finds are published at https://finds.org.uk
Attribution: The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum
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