Buttons & Buckles
Whenever I go detecting I am almost always guaranteed to find some buttons and quite often a buckle. These common items have been in constant use for several hundred years and some eras had a higher trend in using them than others. Nowadays our buttons are mainly plastic but a couple hundred years ago they would all have been metal and therefore there are plenty of them in the ground wherever you go. They very greatly in size and design from small shirt buttons, military buttons etc to large dandy buttons from the Georgian period that were a fashion statement of the day.
Buttons galore, a good sign of past human activity in a detecting area, but also a personal item that a long forgotten villager (or ancestor for some) wore and lost whilst working in the local fields.
A beautiful cloak fastener button that would have been part of a pair with a small wire connector to fasten someone’s cloak around their shoulders. This button dates from the mid 17th century and its decorative gilding is still visible.
The Medieval period to the 17th century produced a huge amount of different types of buckles. The 17th century in particular was the golden age of the buckle, men would use them to attach their spurs which were a fashion accessory of the era, they would fasten their trousers at the knee with them, their shirt sleeves would have them and then they would also have them on belts as well.
They often come out of the ground with a beautiful dark green colour which is a patina or colouring that copper alloy in particular takes on as it ages over the centuries.
Buckle up, a selection of buckles, some from the medieval era but most from the 17th century.