The Benty Grange hanging bowl is a fragmentary Anglo-Saxon artefact from the seventh century AD. All that remains are two escutcheons: bronze frames that are usually circular and elaborately decorated, and that sit outside the rim or at the interior base of a hanging bowl. A third disintegrated soon after excavation, and no longer survives. The escutcheons were found in 1848 by the antiquary Thomas Bateman, while excavating a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in western Derbyshire, and were undoubtedly buried as part of an entire hanging bowl. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, including the hanging bowl and the boar crested Benty Grange helmet.
The surviving escutcheons are made of enamelled bronze and are in diameter. They show three dolphin-like creatures arranged in a circle, each biting the tail of the animal ahead of it. Their bodies and the background are made of enamel, likely all yellow, with the animals' outlines and eyes tinned or silvered, as are the borders of the escutcheons. Although three escutcheons from a hanging bowl at Faversham also contain dolphin-like creatures, the Benty Grange design is most closely parallelled by Insular manuscripts, particularly figures in the Durham Gospel Fragment and the Book of Durrow. Surviving illustrations of the third escutcheon show that it was of a different size and style, exhibiting a scroll-like pattern; it parallels the basal disc of a hanging bowl from Winchester, and may too have been originally placed at the bottom of the Benty Grange bowl.
What remains of one escutcheon belongs to Museums Sheffield and as of 2021 was displayed at Weston Park Museum. The other is held by the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford; as of 2021 it is not on display.
Hanging bowls
Hanging bowls are thin-walled bronze vessels, with three or four equidistant hooks around the rim for suspension, that are associated with Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking archaeology and art. The hooks project from escutcheons: bronze plates or frames that are usually circular or oval, and that are frequently elaborately decorated. Basal escutcheons, also known as basal discs, would sometimes sit at the base of the interior. A 2005 catalogue of hanging bowls identified some 174 known examples, around 60 of which were relatively complete. 141 were from Britain and Ireland, 26 from Norway, and 7 from elsewhere in Europe.
The original purpose of hanging bowls, and their place of manufacture, is unknown. They appear to be of Celtic manufacture, with examples still used during Anglo-Saxon and Viking times. Many suggestions have been made as to their original use, including as lamps or lamp reflectors, votive offerings hung in churches, vessels for liturgical use such as washing hands or communion vessels, sanctuary lamps, wayside drinking vessels of the sort Edwin of Northumbria is said to have provided travellers, finger bowls, vessels for weighing wood, magnetic compasses, food containers, holy water stoups, wash basins, and ceremonial vessels used in mead halls. Whatever their original functional purpose, by the seventh century hanging bowls appear to have been increasingly associated with wealth and the status of their owners; by the end of the century, their role as a status symbol may have been more important than any functional purpose.
Description
Two escutcheons are all that remain of the Benty Grange hanging bowl. They are made of enamelled bronze and are in diameter. They have the same design and plain frames, parts of which survive. Both escutcheons are fragmentary; enough survives of each for the design to be reconstructed, and, because of overlapping segments, for it to be certain that they represent two distinct pieces. Whether they are hook or basal escutcheons is uncertain, but a ring on the back of one fragment suggests an association with the suspension chains, and a contemporary watercolour by Llewellynn Jewitt seems to show that a hook may have been present at excavation. The decomposed enamel background appears yellow to the eye, as it did when excavated. A yellow-creatures-on-red-background colour scheme has also been suggested, but on minimal and possibly incorrect evidence. As sampling of the enamel was not permitted when the Sheffield escutcheon was analysed at the museum in 1968, however, the all-yellow hypothesis is not definitive.