English: Post-medieval cast lead hornbook of late 17th century date. The hornbook is in the form of a large disc of lead with a small break at one side, which indicates the position of the handle, which is now missing. The hornbook has relief decoration on the front of a ladder-pattern border all the way around, and a pellet in the centre. The lettering is written in 5 lines, separated by moulded lines. The gaps formed between the edges of the disc and the edges of the lettering are filled with relief transverse lines, creating a ladder pattern similar to but wider than that around the border. The lettering reads:

"+ ABC / dEFGHIK / LMN . OPq / RS[reversed S]VWT / XYZ".

The break showing the position of the handle occurs beneath the lowest line of lettering.

The reverse of the disc is undecorated, apart from a vertical line with a trilobed terminal extending up from the break where the handle would have been attached. The disc is somewhat mis-shapen and bent, with a small tear near the top of the lettering.

Diameter 47.9mm, thickness 2.1mm, weight 26.93g.

Hornbooks were used as teaching aids, usually for the alphabet but occasionally for numbers, or the Lord's Prayer or similar texts. The name is from the most common type, which was in the form of a wooden board with written lettering covered by a sheet of transparent horn for protection. Similar devices made in other materials take the same name, although the lead-alloy examples are so small that they are likely to have been toys (Lewis 2012, 98-101). Many known hornbooks have mistakes in the lettering; this example has missing letters (J and U), misplaced letters (T) and letters which are written wrongly (reversed S).

An unrecorded example in Benet's catalogue is almost exactly the same as this one, down to the same mistakes in the alphabet, suggesting that they may have been cast from the same mould and thereby mass-produced (Benet, p. 605, object P99-0202).