Object: Palstave
Period: Bronze Age
Collection: Hanley Museum,City of Stoke-on-Trent,Lent by Mr. J.R.B. Masefield, Feb. 1929
Site: England, staffordshire,alton,near great gate wood,c. sk0441,found in cist excavated in rock.
Parish: Alton
County: Staffordshire
Country: England
Grid reference: SK 0441
Year of discovery: NA
Length (mm): 130
Width (mm): 26
Edge (mm): 63
Thickness (mm): 29
Weight (g): 447
Patina: Remains of patina lustrous blue-green and brown; glossy brown in septum on one face.
Surface: Rubbed down and pitted.
Composition: Bronze
Other: Width: edge 63mm; ridges 26; butt 25mm,Weight: 15.75 oz = 446.5 gms
Associations: None reported.
Description: Edge recurved, blunted and damaged; angles broken. Butt broken off. vestiges of midrib on faces worn almost flat.
Publications: (Not to be published at present),Letter from J. Babb 14/11/96; entry in his/her grandmother's diary: "John Gent of Great Gate found on Tommy's Banks, between Great Date Wood and the tops of the hill, a bronze axe. When found it was perfect, but the workman with him knocked the soil from it and broke the end off, sometime between 1875-1882....It was borrowed by Mr. Masefield of Cheadle, 1904."