Britain's Secret Treasures

by Mary-Ann Ochota

  We simply don’t know what these spoons were used for, but the current theory is that they were some kind of ritual divination device. Perhaps a spoon was held in each hand, and a thick liquid like blood, oil, honey, or a fine powder, was allowed to flow through the hole in the ‘hole’ spoon, into the marked quarters of the ‘cross’ spoon. Depending on where the mixture dropped, the diviner would be able to predict the future or counsel on the best course of action.

  An alternative is that the spoons were put together with the bowls facing each other, and a substance was blown in through the hole and allowed to make a pattern inside the bowls, or the substance inside was blown around through the hole.

  Like tarot cards, reading tea leaves, or the Roman practice of reading the entrails of a sacrificed animal, the ‘truth’ is laid out in the otherwise random alignment or pattern, and it requires someone with the appropriate insight to ‘translate’ what the pattern means.

  Many seasonal cycles break into quarters – the annual seasons with their equinox days, or the moon’s phases, for example, could perhaps be represented in the spoon quadrants. Maybe people in the British and Irish Iron Age sought advice on when to plant crops, when to marry, begin journeys or commence raiding or warfare. It’s possible that ritual specialists (priests, priestesses or ‘druids’) were resident in every community, or they might have travelled between communities in an area, like holy men and shamans do in many tribal societies nowadays.

  The spoons Trevor found were on a slight ridge surrounded by what was once a boggy area, which fits with the nationwide pattern of important artefacts being deposited in or near watery places. Aerial photography has shown that the spoons were placed in a pit or at the end of a ditch within some kind of ritual enclosure with a double ring of earthworks.

  Perhaps when a diviner died, their spoons were sacrificed, or if the spoons had been read wrongly or given bad advice, they were given back to the gods. Three pairs of spoons have been found with burials – one pair in Deal, Kent, were placed on either side of the dead person’s head; a pair in Burnmouth, Berwick, were placed next to each other on top of the person’s face; the third burial pair from Pogny, France, were one inside the other in an organic bag, inside a bronze bowl, next to the body.

  Very few Iron Age artefacts have been found in Shropshire, so these add significantly to our knowledge of the regional spread of artefacts. It highlights why it is so important that people record their finds with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. To further our understanding of these enigmatic treasures, archaeological context is everything – and that’s why Trevor’s careful treatment of his findspot, and his prompt reporting of the find, have proved so significant. The Nesscliffe spoons raise so many questions – the answers have yet to be divined.

  See also:

  Pegsdon Mirror

  Ringlemere Cup

  Horns and Crotal Musical Instruments

  Dartmoor Sword

  A famous sword brand from the Civil War

  Date: Around 1650

  Where, when and how found: Dartmoor, Devon; 2008; discovered during building work

  Finder: Anonymous

  Where is it now? Returned to finder

  Visit: Royal Armouries Museums at Leeds, the Tower of London and Fort Nelson, Fareham

  www.armouries.org.uk

  This steel sword was found in a village on the outskirts of Dartmoor during building work. The finders took it to a Finds Day at Exeter, and it was recorded with the PAS.

  Made from iron forged with carbon and silica to make steel, hammered into shape and then sharpened on both sides, it dates to around 1650, and is a style known as a ‘basket-hilted’ sword. The ‘hilt’ is the handle section of a sword, comprising the grip, the guard to protect the hand, and the pommel, the enlarged fitting at the end of the handle to stop the sword slipping and to counterbalance the blade. The basket hilt developed to protect the hand from all angles, and designs became increasingly ornate through the 16th to 18th Centuries.

  Basket-hilted swords like this were relatively heavy swords, double-edged and up to 1m long. In contrast to the rapier, which was light, thin and flexible, the Dartmoor Sword used the weight of the blade to strike heavy and deadly cuts as well as quicker, thrusting jabs. The skill was to combine the ‘cut and thrust’ – the origin of the phrase we still use today.

  This type of sword is also referred to as a ‘mortuary sword’ because many of those made after 1649 had an image of the executed king, Charles I, engraved onto the hilt, especially swords being used by Royalist supporters. The men who owned these engraved swords had fought for King Charles, and were now fighting to put his exiled son, Charles II, back on the throne. Oliver Cromwell also owned and used a mortuary sword, although his didn’t have a picture of the King on it – you can see Cromwell’s sword at the Tower of London. By the 1670s, sword fashions had moved on, and more people chose to use the ‘small sword’ rather than the longer, heavier mortuary swords.

  Ferara swords

  The Dartmoor Sword blade doesn’t have an image of the King, but is engraved with an intriguing name – ‘Andrea’ on one side, ‘Ferrara’ on the other – perhaps the man who made the sword.

  An agreement from 1578 details a contract between brothers ‘Zanandrea’ and ‘Zandona’ of Ferara, swordsmiths at Belluno, northern Italy, and two London merchants. In the contract, the Ferara brothers agree to supply the merchants with 600 swords ‘of the kind used in England’, every month for ten years. They agree not to make any swords intended for England for anyone else – an exclusive import deal of 72,000 swords over a decade. It’s an incredible number, given that each of these was hand-produced.

  In a 1585 treatise on military pursuits, the writer recommends the ‘most excellent’ sword makers in Italy, picking out Giovan Donato and Andrea, ‘ingenious’ brothers from the Ferara family of Belluno. Earlier swords have also been discovered with the names Cosmo Ferara and Piero Ferara.

  Based on the style of the basket hilt, the Dartmoor Sword has been dated to the mid-1600s, which would mean that a later Ferara, also named Andrea, must have made it. But the spelling of the maker’s name differs between the documents and the Dartmoor Sword – Ferara and Ferrara. It’s been suggested that this mean it’s a fake, engraved by an illiterate person making knock-off swords. It would be like buying a fake Chanel or Gucci handbag that’s accidentally spelled ‘Channel’ or ‘Guchi’. But there is another explanation.

  It’s more likely that the name ‘Andrea Ferrara’ was engraved to indicate that it was a quality blade, even if it hadn’t actually been made by a Ferara swordsmith (like calling a vacuum cleaner a ‘Hoover’ even though it’s a different brand). The final theory is that spelling didn’t matter so much in the 16th and 17th centuries, hadn’t been formalised yet, and any approximation of the name was as good as any other. That might mean it is a genuine Ferara/Ferrara sword, made by one of the greatest sword-making dynasties in Europe.

  See also:

  Nether Stowey Hoard

  Alnwick Sword

  Llanbedrgoch Viking Treasure

  Life and death in medieval Anglesey

  Date: 600–1000, Viking

  Where, when and how found: Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey, Wales; 2007; metal detecting

  Finders: Archie Gillespie and Peter Corbett

  Where is it now? Finds from the site are displayed at Amgueddfa Cymru, the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

  www.museumwales.ac.uk

  The pattern of Viking raiding and settlement from the 790s AD through to the 1000s has been pieced together with evidence from documentary sources, place name evidence, genetic population study and, of course, archaeology.

  Most of the early Viking raids in the British Isles targeted the undefended monasteries that were full of precious Church treasures, like gold crosses and cups and jewelled reliquaries. All along the east coast of England, up and over the northern coast and down along the west coast of the British mainland, víkingr parties took wh
at they could during surprise attacks, and carried the spoils, and sometimes people for slavery, back across the sea. Only a small proportion of the Scandinavian population took part in these raiding trips, and it was considered that raiding was a young man’s game, and older men should be more focused on family and farming back home.

  In the Anglo-Saxon chronicles that record these raids, the attackers are called Norsemen, or Northmen. The Northmen who settled in France ultimately became the ‘Normans’. In records written in Iceland, the newcomers are called ‘Ostmen’ or ‘Austmann’, meaning ‘Men from the East’.

  For skilled and efficient Viking sailors, with manoeuvrable and very seaworthy longboats, the sea wasn’t a barrier or a defence, it was a highway. It enabled quick and easy access to lucrative targets, and the victims of their raids understood this well. The monastery at Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland, was ransacked in 795, 802 and 806AD, and eventually the surviving monks decided to abandon their holy island and relocate inland. The risk of smash-and-grab attack if they remained on the coast was too great.

  Increasingly, raiders also looked for land that they could settle. Fishing and farming were the main activities for most men back in their Scandinavian homelands – in these new territories, some men took local wives, others took partners in addition to their families back home. Some brought their families over from Scandinavia to settle in the new lands.

  The general pattern of settlement is that Danish peoples settled on the eastern side of England, and Norwegian people travelled north and west, settling Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and down into the Irish Sea, founding Dublin and other Irish towns, as well as settling and trading with native communities in coastal Wales, the Wirral and Merseyside.

  Anglesey Vikings

  The isle of Anglesey was always considered to be an important staging post on these journeys west, but thanks to the work of two metal detectorists, we now know just how important Anglesey really was.

  In 1992, Archie Gillespie and Peter Corbett reported some Viking weights and coins to the Portable Antiquities Scheme Wales, based at the National Museum and Galleries of Wales. No one knew about any site or settlement there, so it was decided to investigate further. The geophysical survey revealed more than anyone was expecting – a fortified enclosure with large stone walls over an area of 10,000 square metres. Clear evidence of specialist activities in different areas, including metalworking in bronze, tin, silver and iron, farming and food processing was discovered.

  Coins, hacksilver (silver jewellery and bullion chopped into chunks to use as currency for trading), whetstones for sharpening knives and ornaments for people and horse harnesses, show that this was a busy and prosperous settlement, occupied for centuries. It’s likely that native Welsh people were living on the island before the Vikings arrived, and either tolerated the incomers, or perhaps more likely fled from, or were killed by the new residents.

  Just outside the enclosure archaeologists discovered evidence of troubled episodes in the site’s history. Five human bodies, dated to the 900s AD, had been unceremoniously dumped into a ditch, and it appears that the adult male in the group had his hands tied behind his back when he was killed. At the time when these people died, Viking communities buried their dead according to traditional Christian principles – laying the body with reverence on the back, aligned East-West. The five in the ditch were dropped in North-South, possibly as an additional insult to their bodies, or their bodies were simply dropped in at random. An alternative explanation is that these were Viking victims of the native Welsh, who considered the Viking incomers to be pagans and not deserving of any Christian respect after death.

  The Viking legacy in this area along the west coast of England and Wales is evident in place names and family surnames, and also in our DNA. Thanks to Archie and Peter’s discovery, we can add a hugely significant site to our understanding of Anglesey life more than 1,000 years ago.

  See also:

  West Yorkshire Ring Hoard

  Vale of York Hoard

  Saltfleetby Spindle Whorl

  Prisoner of War Farthing Pendant

  The craftwork of a German soldier-prisoner

  Date: Around 1939–1948, Modern

  Where, when and how found: Near Ludlow, Shropshire; 2012; metal detecting

  Finder: Chris Webb

  Where is it now? Returned to finder

  Get involved: Many archive documents about POW camps are held at the National Archives, Kew

  www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

  Council for British Archaeology ‘Defence of Britain project’, where volunteers recorded 20,000 20th century military sites across the UK. Project archive online at

  www.archaeologyuk.org/cba/projects/dob/

  Arborglyph tree graffiti recording information and links at www.wiltshirearborglyphs.weebly.com

  The person who made this pendant took an old bronze farthing of King George V, a coin which was issued throughout his reign, from 1911 to 1936, and carefully drilled, cut out and filed the ‘insides’ of the coin by hand, to make the King’s head stand alone in profile within the frame. They then drilled a hole at the top, so the coin could be hung as a pendant – probably either as a necklace or on a fob watch chain. The work is very precise and neat – someone took a lot of care over making this little piece.

  It’s interesting in its own right, but what makes this find a real secret treasure is that it was discovered near the site of what used to be a WWII Prisoner of War camp, and is thought to have been made by one of the soldiers interned there.

  Camp 84

  More than 400,000 people, mostly men, were brought to England to be held as Prisoners of War (POWs) until the end of hostilities – fifteen camps of different sizes are known from Shropshire alone. Shropshire was thought to be a good county for keeping prisoners because it’s landlocked and rural – if they escaped, they would be easy to spot, and they wouldn’t get far. Camp 84, near Ludlow, was classed as a ‘German Working Camp’ – the most common designation in the country. Some sites held ordinary citizens from Germany and Italy who’d been living in Britain before the war, and had been interned when war was declared. Other camps had military prisoners from Italy, Ukraine and other non-allied countries. The site of Camp 84 has been demolished and the area redeveloped – the last surviving feature was a derelict water-tower, the only permanent brick feature on site. However, other small pieces of evidence remain in the ground, as well as a rich paper trail in the archives.

  A typical POW camp, like Camp 84, had a prisoners’ compound area for around 750 men, a guards’ compound, recreation area, dining huts, garden plots for growing fruit and veg, a cookhouse, detention block, a sick bay known as a ‘camp reception station’, toilet blocks, sewage and water works. Many camps didn’t have guard towers, but were ringed with barbed-wire entanglements and high rows of fences. Prisoners lived in prefabricated, specially-designed huts made from concrete and steel. Each hut housed twenty men in ten two-man bays.

  Prisoners weren’t generally considered to be high risk, and it was expected that they’d work to earn their keep. The men were set to agricultural, labouring and construction jobs, picking up the work that British men who were away fighting would have been doing. Compared with the treatment of prisoners of war elsewhere during WWII, conditions in the British camps weren’t bad.

  Metal detectorist Chris Webb has found a few items that probably once belonged to German POWs from Camp 84, including a silver finger ring fragment with an enamelled Iron Cross motif on it, a symbol linked to the German Army. The prisoners found creative ways to keep themselves occupied, and often made things that might have trading value – a pretty trinket could get you some more cigarettes, food, or other luxury. This farthing pendant is part of this tradition of trench or prisoner art, where soldiers and captives make art out of what is to hand.

  One of the most famous pieces of ‘prisoner art’ is the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in the Orkney Islands. Italian POWs,
posted to Orkney to help construct sea barrier defences, transformed two temporary Nissen huts into an elaborately decorated place of worship that still stands today. Research groups have also begun to record other categories of military and prisoner activity: trees on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, have lots of graffiti carved by American GIs who were waiting to be posted to France. Some of these ‘arborglyphs’ – tree graffiti – have been traced to specific soldiers – some inevitably leading to war graves, and others to living family members.

  After the war

  POWs remained in Britain until as late as 1948 – once hostilities ceased, returning the men to their home territories wasn’t a priority for the British government. Many men decided to stay rather than be repatriated – they had made friends, had girlfriends, and many local people didn’t consider the POWs the ‘enemy’ but as unfortunate victims of the same conflict that had taken their own sons and brothers away. After the war ended, some sites were transformed into hostels for agricultural workers, and the very same men who had been POWs moved back in as paid farm labourers. One camp in Cambridgeshire, Friday Bridge Camp, still serves as a hostel for farm workers. Most camps, however, were quickly demolished because they didn’t have much reuse potential, and no one considered them to be historically valuable.

  We don’t actually know exactly how many POW camps there were in Britain. Some camps are only now being identified archaeologically and through archival research, and others have been lost from memory, never existed officially. Records are patchy, and prisoners often weren’t told exactly where they were, or allowed to write any identifying address on their correspondence.