File:Early-Medieval (Anglo-Saxon) Ansate Brooch (FindID 800473).jpg

English: An incomplete (unfinished) Early-Medieval (Anglo-Saxon) copper-alloy brooch (c. 450-c. 550). The pin lug is intact but has not been pierced.

The flat arms, slightly convex at the front and flat at the rear, are of slightly different lengths (17.5mm and 13.2mm) making the brooch not strictly equal-armed. They are broadly 'T'-shaped, with the rounded wide ends adjoining the bow (widths 12.4 and 11.1mm). The long elements both taper to a rounded end. The faceted bow that joins the arms curves very slightly in side profile. It is triangular in cross-section and flat at the rear. At the rear, the surface of the bow is lower than the arms and so forms a step. The pin-lug is 'D'-shaped in side profile and measures 6.0mm in height, 5.1mm in width and 1.5mm in thickness. The catch-plate is almost complete: a small portion of the curled-over part that secured the pin-tip is missing. The catch-plate measures 6.3mm in height, 5.3mm in width and 1.4mm in thickness.

This brooch is corroded and matt green. It has small areas of a darker green patina and traces of a white metal coating at the front.

Length: 39.0mm; width: 12.4mm; thickness: 2.8mm; thickness including catch-plate: 7.3mm. Weight: 3.46g.

Although this brooch bears some resemblance to an ansate brooch of Thörle's group IIIc (dated to c. 600-680 AD on the Continent) brooches of this type are extremely uncommon in England and never found in 7th-century graves. There are, however, good examples of equal-armed brooches of this type from late 5th- or 6th-century graves at Blacknall Field 26 (Ager in Annable and Eagles 2010, 27-28) and from Frilford, now in the British Museum (1867,0204.8).