File:Brooch, Type C2 (FindID 472591).jpg

English: Head-plate from a copper-alloy brooch which appears at first sight to be square-headed, but is in fact a developed form of cruciform brooch.

It has an undecorated central panel which tapers upwards and is outlined down each side and across the base with a fine groove. A slight step runs across the base, below the border groove, making a link with the bow. Two rudimentary wings, both undecorated, are squeezed in next to the central panel, one to either side; these extend both a little lower and a little higher than the central panel. The wings and central panel are surrounded by a border of bold, almost crude cast relief decoration in Style I, which can be seen to derive from the knobs of cruciform brooches linked by corner pieces. Each 'knob' bears decoration of a stylised outward-looking human mask, with pairs of pellets in the centre, between each pair a bar flaring to a triangle, suggesting a nose, and above each pair a raised panel forming a brow. Each of the three human masks thus formed also has a raised cheek below each eye, the cheeks all having decoration of a drilled dot. The masks can also be seen as opposed pairs of profile birds' heads; in this case, the brow and nose form opposed headframes, each bird has a single eye, and the cheeks with drilled dots become curled beaks.

At each of the lower corners is another eagle's beak which can be paired with one eye from the side knobs to form another, larger, profile bird's head. The knobs are linked at the top corners by pairs of opposed eyeless eagles' heads to form what appears to be a square head to the brooch.

On the reverse are the two integrally cast pierced lugs which retained the brooch's iron spring, traces of which survive between the lugs. The motifs appear to have been cast and then amplified with the use of a chisel which has, in places on the left-hand side, penetrated the metal.

The bow begins with a short flat undecorated panel and then a small fragment of the central area survives, with a flat strip in the centre and facets to either side. The bow ends in a fresh break.

Length 40.1mm; Width 53.8mm; Thickness 1.8mm; Mass 33.18g

This brooch is of a type classed by Leeds as a great square-headed brooch of his Type C2, which he described as being a square-headed brooch with a cruciform-type foot; it is particularly close to Leeds's example 134, from Darlington (Leeds 1949, 79-89). The distinctive foot is missing from the 'near Bridlington' brooch, but it is otherwise clearly from Type C2, and the arrangement of the headplate, with undecorated central panel, wings and knobs with relief decoration in Style I, clearly show that this brooch type is 'entirely explicable through the cruciform brooch tradition and owe[s] nothing whatever to the square-headed brooch series' (Hines 1997, 14). Mortimer classes this type of cruciform brooch as her type Z4, which she dates to the middle of the sixth century (1990, 177).

While examples are known from elsewhere in England, Type C2 brooches are a mainly northern phenomenon and the discovery of an example near Bridlington causes no surprise. Compare NCL-189E30.