Casgliadau Arlein

Headstud brooch with solid cast chain loop. The spring is enclosed in semi cylindrical wings with end plates holding the axis bar and the chord is placed internally. This brooch is thus rather unusual among headstud brooches. Hattatt (1987, 121, no.941) using Hull’s unpublished corpus was able to list only three headstud brooches with this spring arrangement, all from a fairly localized area: from near Cirencester; from Chepstow; and from Bollitree in Herefordshire. This would thus seem to be a local variant. Such a spring arrangement is more usual on some trumpet headed variant brooches and some of the knee types, which makes a late second century date probable.