A gilt-bronze great square-headed brooch comprising a rectangular headplate with two panels of chip-carved Style I ornament flanking a beast-head with triangular muzzle and two pellet eyes, raised three-sided frame and outer band of pellets above beast-heads with lentoid eyes; the shallow bow with raised median rib, flanges to the edges and punched pellet detailing; footplate with beast-head between curved pellet lines, pierced horse-head lappets, lozengiform central panel with knot of Style I limbs; two lateral discs, one pierced to accept a stud and the other with a domed stud in place; the finial a disc with human mask inverted; pin-lug and part of catch to the reverse.

PROVENANCE:
Found by the vendor's grandfather while searching with a metal detector in Oving, near Chichester, West Sussex, UK, in 2001.

LITERATURE:
See Hines, J., A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches, London, 1997.

FOOTNOTES:
The various elements of the brooch find similar counterparts on others in the series, such as the form of the bow which corresponds to those on brooches from Herpes (Pas-de-Calais, France) and Sarre (Kent) (Hines's plates 10, 11) and the outer band of masks on the headplate which can be found on a brooch from Tuddenham (Hines's plate 15).