File:Early Medieval girdle hanger (FindID 528651).jpg

English: Part of a copper alloy girdle hanger dating from the early Anglo-Saxon period, about AD 400 - 720. There is a broken suspension loop at the top; it is a right angles to the rest of the hanger. There are half round mouldings at the top of the shaft. There are two triple collars. The shaft then reduces in thickness from 4.44mm to 2.73mm. The shaft flares from the suspension loop to the centre where it is lozenge shaped, and then starts to taper but the shaft is broken soon after the centre and the terminal is missing. The shaft is oval in section and is decorated with a row of eight annulet punches along the centre starting from the moulding. Annulet punches then continue along the edges of the shaft, but the centre is decorated with two uneven rows of short punched dashes. The reverse is plain. The breaks are worn and patinated and the metal has a smooth and well-formed grey green patina.

The suspension ends and terminals of girdle hangers survive better than the centre of the shafts, but even so, flared examples seem to be unusual. Some other examples are SF-479043, NLM718, NMS-308BF6 and NMS-7F58E2.

SF-479043 notes that: "Girdle hangers are pseudo-keys which hung from women's belts, like this example they all consist of a shaft with a suspension loop turned at 90 degrees to the rest of the shaft, they are also usually only decorated on one face, however they do tend to be flatter and the shafts are more usually rectangular in shape."