Welsh Journals

SHORTER NOTES AN EARLY IRON AGE METALWORKER'S MOULD FROM WORMS HEAD Over fifty years ago the late Mrs. M. E. Cunnington published an account of objects found by her son, the late Captain E. C. Cunnington, along the edge of a low cliff near the western end of Worms Head. It seems that at this point marine erosion had cut into the site of a midden, in the hollow between the Middle and Outer Head (SS 386877) and had exposed a deposit of sea-shells, animal bones, pot-sherds and fragments of bronze and iron.1 The objects which Mrs. Cunnington subsequently presented to the National Museum (24.117/1-6) are all of stone and none of the pottery or metal fragments mentioned appears to have survived. There are, however, some small sherds of Roman and medieval character in the national collection (25-219) which were collected by the late Major H. E. David from a midden on the south side of the Inner Head (SS 394874) and some of the stone objects collected by Captain Cunnington may be as late as this. The headland was evidently occupied at various dates and the records concerning the finds are so vague that the latter cannot be regarded as necessarily associated. It is therefore with the remarkable metalworker's mould which Mrs. Cunnington published2 that I shall deal with in this note, purely on its internal merits. It is curious that this should have remained so long neglected by students of Early Iron Age metalwork, in spite of the great develop- ment of research in this field since the War. Possibly its exclusion from the Museum's publication Prehistory of Wales and its relegation, long ago, to basement storage apparently as a result of uncertainty as to its date, have conspired to discourage study, and it was only when I re-examined it recently for the purposes of a revised edition of the afore- mentioned work that I realized that the objects which were to be cast with the help of this mould must surely have been of pre-Roman Iron Age type. Both valves of the mould were found by Captain Cunnington; they are made of a variety of Old Red Sandstone ("Brownstones") which my colleagues Dr. D. A. Bassett and E. Evans of the Department of Geology of the National Museum assure me is likely to have come from the southern Marches of Wales or from the outcrop of the same measures along the northern edge of the coal basin and north of Carmarthen Bay. The valves are irregular in shape, about 120 mm. by 110 mm. across and 25-30 mm. thick, and the two surfaces in contact have been polished; they were designed to produce four metal objects simultaneously, but one of the valves also has matrices on its outer surface, for the production of two plain circular-sectioned rings 14 mm. and 13 mm. in diameter respectively and a small decorative detail (Fig. 1, 2). These perhaps never functioned, for they have no runners to carry the molten metal into the matrices, and a third valve is required. However, the main object which the mould is designed to produce is a ring 55 mm. in diameter with a central opening 19 mm. in diameter and with an oval section 6 mm. thick (Fig. 1, 1). The inner and outer edges of this ring were decorated with circular mouldings on both faces of which was a zig-zag line in relief, while the area in between was decorated with a continuous scroll surrounding the ring on both faces, made up of alternately coiled tendrils with slight differences between the two faces. The matrices for this ring occupy the centre of each valve and are served by a single channel leading in from the edge of the mould. Nearer the edges of the mould, on each valve, are matrices for three ring beads. One of these, 21 mm. in diameter, 4 mm. thick and with an aperture of 1 mm. has a raised zig-zag moulding like those round the edges of the large ring, while the other two have seven spherical protuberances radiating from the centre of lArchaeologia Cambrensis, 1920, pp. 251-6. 2Ib., Plates A and B.