An Anglo-Saxon blue glass bead with yellow and green decoration, found on Hilbre Island in 1863. 

It was mentioned by Henry Ecroyd-Smith in a report on the archaeology of Merseyside to the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in1866. He described it as a "bead, composed of transparent glass, of a beautiful cobalt blue colour, ornamented by a marbling band of yellow enamel, which is intertwined by a small thread of green, also enamel, and like the yellow, opaque" and that it was found "having been excavated by a rabbit from its burrow .... , upon the site of the burying place attached to the cell of monks".

Hilbre Island had a monastic cell by the 11th century, and evidence like this bead hints that it may already have been a religious hermitage before the Norman invasion.

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An Anglo-Saxon blue glass bead with yellow and green decoration, found on Hilbre Island in 1863. It was mentioned by Henry Ecroyd-Smith in a report on the archaeology of Merseyside to the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in1866. He described it as a "bead, composed of transparent glass, of a beautiful cobalt blue colour, ornamented by a marbling band of yellow enamel, which is intertwined by a small thread of green, also enamel, and like the yellow, opaque" and that it was found "having been excavated by a rabbit from its burrow .... , upon the site of the burying place attached to the cell of monks". Hilbre Island had a monastic cell by the 11th century, and evidence like this bead hints that it may already have been a religious hermitage before the Norman invasion.

Bead; Glass

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