File:Early Medieval trefoil brooch (FindID 598245).jpg

English: An incomplete copper alloy, trefoil plate brooch dating from the Early Medieval period, AD 850 to AD 950. The brooch front is slightly convex and consists of three broad arms, each arm having a rounded end. The front is decorated three strand interlace, but corrosion pitting on the front obscures most of the design. The reverse of the brooch is flat. One of the arms carries a pin mount, consisting of two small, semicircular plates which are pierced to take the pin. A ferrous pin bar and part of a ferrous pin remain in place. Another of the arms carries the stump of an additional, rectangular mounting point, and there is also a scar on the third arm suggesting the brooch also had a suspension loop. The brooch has a patchy, dark brown patina with grey green corrosion on the front. It is 29.3mm long, 26.1mm wide and 5mm thick. It weighs 7.03gm.

Similar trefoil brooches have been recorded on the PAS database; see for example references: WMID-308D55; LIN-56D731; WILT-9A5AE7 and NMS-56E967.

Jane Kershaw has kindly examined the brooch and adds:

"The brooch is extremely corroded but some decoration is visible within the lobes. This consists of ribbed, double contoured interlace around the inner edges of the lobes, interspersed with triangular-like features at the sides and at the tip of each lobe. The triangular-like features are devolved representations of Borre-style animal heads, with the ribbed bands originally representing their bodies. Another element is curved bands towards the centre of the brooch. Due to the corrosion, these are difficult to integrate into the overall decorative scheme but are likely to represent the curved legs of Borre-style beasts, so again contribute to the zoomorphic character of the brooch.

The brooch is a new addition to the existing typology of trefoil brooches by Birgit Maixner (2005), and since it combines interlace and zoomorphic features it ought to belong to her group F. Both the double contouring and the zoomorphic elements integrated into the border are seen on a brooch from southwest Sweden (Type F 3.3), but the lobe shape is entirely different, and the Selby brooch is much smaller. Nonetheless, this context suggests a southern Scandinavian origin, which is consistent with other Scandinavian brooches from England. Date-wise, since the decoration is Borre, I'd say late ninth to early tenth century. There are two other type F trefoil brooches from England: one from Thetford, which is also unique, and another (Type F 3.1) from Bures Hamlet, Essex (PAS SF-EB5262).

One interesting feature concerns the arrangement of the pin fittings on the reverse. Normally, the pin lug is on the right and the catchplate on the left when viewed from the reverse, with the third lug facing downwards: an arrangement which ensures that, to the viewer, the trefoil shape would have appeared symmetrical, with one lobe facing up and two facing down. However, on this brooch, the placement of the fittings suggest the brooch was positioned with one lobe facing down, meaning the brooch would have looked off-centre. The pin fittings would have been cast integrally with the brooch, but, in this case, it appears that they were incorrectly positioned on the model. So, there is a design flaw, but this doesn't appear to have impeded the use of the brooch!

Dr. Jane Kershaw

British Academy Post-doctoral Research Fellow Institute of Archaeology University College London"