POST MEDIEVAL CLOTH SEAL

1600

A Post-Medieval lead cloth seal fragment. It is incomplete due to old breaks and consists of part of one disc only, with remains of a rivet on the reverse. The disc depicts part of a lion rampant filling the whole field and surrounded by a pelleted ring. Part of the border outside the ring is extant but there is no engraving on it. The fragment measures 34.26mm in surviving diameter, 25.37mm in surviving width and weighs 10.01g.A similar example from Braintree, Essex, is illustrated in Egan 1995, no.20, showing a lion rampant in the field, and surrounded by an inscription. The size and design of the Suffolk example matches that from Braintree, the latter dating to the seventeenth century AD. The lion rampant, however, is a well-known motif from cloth-producing towns and the source of this example remains uncertain.