Casgliadau Arlein

Despite the fact that brooches of this type are classified by Hattatt, following Hull, as Knee brooches of native British manufacture, the obvious affinities of the Usk example with Trumpet brooches of the Chester type dictates its inclusion in this section of the report. Like the Chester type, the brooch has a trumpet shaped head achieved by the junction of the bow, almost triangular in cross section at the head, with a flat, here U-shaped, plate, surmounted by an imperforate stop for the head loop; the spring arrangement, too, is as on the Chester type. The brooch differs from the Chester type in having a bow not broken at the waist by horizontal mouldings but with a vertical flange, in profile the shape of a duck's head, along the central line of the bow to either side of a point level with the top of the catchplate. The lower part of the leg is lost. Another example of this type was recovered from Caerleon in the last century, it has a beaded rib down the upper bow, above the flange, and a projecting foot, as has an example from Woodeaton, Oxon. Brooches of this type were classified by Hull as his Type 170, of which he listed only a very few, all with heads of the Chester Type, their distribution spread across south central Britain.
A brooch from Camerton, Somerset is perhaps an example of the type from which the small series in question is derived. The Camerton brooch has the standard Trumpet spring arrangement and a (slightly ornate) trumpet head. The bow has the appearance of consisting of two elements; the upper bow, with its tail bent back over itself at the waist to form an ornamental feature, and the lower bow, apparently brazed to the upper behind the waist feature and with a rib extending to the underside of the head; in fact, the two elements of the bow are a single whole and the effect was achieved by casting, as Hull explained. There is a moulded foot. A smaller example is quoted by Hull from Chaterhouse-on-Mendip. A brooch from Chichester illustrated and briefly discussed by Pitt Rivers is apparently intermediate between brooches of the Camerton type and the series under discussion. It, too, has a trumpet head, though apparently emerging from a rectangular plate, and the standard spring, the waist feature closely follows the form of the Camerton piece but the junction between the two elements of the bow is obviously cast. The rib which extended from the lower bow to the underside of the head is lost. None of the examples discussed is from a context which affords useful evidence of date. The prehistoric ancestry of the waist motif of the Camerton and Chichester brooches was noted by Hull and Pitt Rivers and the affinities of the derivatives with the Chester Type would be consistent with a first century AD date. The provenance of the Usk example is noteworthy.