English: Copper-alloy strap distributor. The object consists of a convex disc with three evenly spaced circular holes, to each of which a separate arm or fitting was originally attached by a hook which turns under to form an incomplete loop. One of these fittings is largely complete except for a broken loop, and is now detached. Above the loop, the fitting widens into an open socket with a longitudinal bar to front and back, each about 14 mm in length. The bars run down to a circle 15 mm in diameter, which forms the mouth of the socket. The junction between the front bar and the circle is marked by an expanded quatrefoil with very worn grooved decoration which may (by analogy with comparable finds) have been intended as a cross. This near-complete fitting is 41 mm long. The second surviving fitting is still attached by its loop to the central disc, but is broken at the top of the openwork socket; the third is missing.

The disc is decorated with a grooved central circle, and three petals or ovals which project from the circle into the spaces between the attachment holes.  The disc is 28 mm in diameter and 2 mm thick.  Two of the attachment holes are broken and incomplete at the outer edge which suggests that they were broken as a result of wear and strain.

Similar detached fittings are known from perhaps a dozen finds in England, most of which have broken loops looking very like hooks. Their function has hitherto been mysterious, and so they have been known as 'socketed hooks'. This example is the first to be found with the central disc and suggests the objects function as a strap distributor or junction. The absence of attachment points on the disc would indicate that it would have merely linked the fittings, and not itself been fixed to anything. It is difficult to see how a conventional strap would have been attached to the fittings, as there are no rivets, and no bar around which leather can be sewn. They are perhaps more likely to have held a rope or cord, perhaps plaited around the openwork of the socket.

Examples of the fittings are known from south-west Wiltshire (Read, 2001, p. 8, no. 39), Cambridgeshire, recorded on this database as <a href="http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_obj.php?type=finds&id=53603" target="_blank"> ESS-A983B8</a>, High Wycombe, and Norfolk. Norfolk has produced by far the most from any English county, with finds of fittings from Attlebridge (SMR 34326), Cawston (SMR 32896), Roudham (SMR 25921) and East Walton (SMR 25856), and discs from Barwick (SMR 28705) and Fring (SMR 1659). It seems likely that this is due to the expertise of the late Sue Margeson at Norwich Castle Museum, who recognised them as Anglo-Scandinavian from their style of decoration, and began recording them in 1990. She suggested that the decoration was in Ringerike style, and that the objects should be dated to the eleventh century. Better awareness of the object type will no doubt result in more examples being recorded.

Circular strap-distributors with three perforations for strapends are well known from Scandinavia from the ninth century onwards, and occasionally turn up in English contexts (e.g. at Brighthampton in Oxfordshire and at New Fresh Wharf in London). In Scandinavia they adorn belts, and often only two of the perforations have strap ends attached. The development into ‘socketed hooks’, however, seems to be a distinctively English innovation.