File:Brooch (FindID 57890-17541).tif

English: An incomplete early Anglo-Saxon copper-alloy brooch, probably of small-long type. It was originally identified as a great square-headed brooch and so the description follows the normal model for this brooch type.

The headplate and part of the bow survive, but the rest of this brooch is missing due to old breaks, now worn. The headplate is distorted due to heat damage, as is one side of the bow. This implies that this brooch was originally deposited in an early Anglo-Saxon cremation.

The headplate is rectangular in shape and measures 43.6mm in width and 25.9mm in height. The headplate frame can be seen, it would have originally have been flat and no headplate corners, borders, or knops are present, and do not appear to have ever been. The headplate second panel is shown by a border of two rectangular shaped grooves. No decoration can be seen within this border, that is on the headplate inner panel. The bow measures 14mm in surviving length and 13mm in width, it is faceted and now bent out of shape. On the back face of the headplate the remains of the copper-alloy pin loop can be seen.

Hines’s definition and classification of great square-headed brooches relies on their relief decoration, which this brooch does not have. It therefore seems safer to classify it as a small-long. It is similar to another square-headed brooch fragment found close by (see SF-27E973). Both brooches were found in the same area as several other early Anglo-Saxon long brooches, both cruciform and small long, and other early Anglo-Saxon objects.