Britain's Secret Treasures
Page 19
It’s not clear whether this badge was intentionally folded over before it was deposited, or whether it was both accidentally bent and accidentally lost. It’s possible that a lost shrine dedicated to St Ursula existed somewhere in the North of England. But the most likely explanation is that someone from Preston made the long pilgrimage to Cologne. They brought this badge back as a spiritual keepsake, infused with St Ursula’s power and memories of their sacred journey.
See also:
Canterbury Pilgrim Badges
Hockley Pendant
Staffordshire Moorlands Ilam Pan
The 1,900-year-old Roman souvenir
Date: 100–200AD, Roman
Where, when and how found: Ilam, Staffordshire; 2003; metal detecting
Finder: Kevin Blackburn
Where is it now? Acquired jointly and on display at Tullie House Museum, Carlisle, Cumbria (April 2013–April 2015); The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent (April 2015–April 2017); British Museum, London (April 2017–April 2019)
www.tulliehouse.co.uk
www.stokemuseums.org.uk
Also visit: Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
www.visithadrianswall.co.uk
The Staffordshire Moorlands are centred around the towns of Leek and Biddulph, boasting some of the most beautiful scenery in the Peak District National Park. Settled for thousands of years, this part of the country has a history as glorious as its scenery.
In 2003, Kevin Blackburn was metal detecting with friends when he discovered something he initially thought must just be a Coke can. But when he unearthed it, he realised the brightly coloured metal, 10cm across and weighing around 130g, was clearly very old and very precious. The friends immediately contacted their Finds Liaison Officer, Jane Stewart.
Kevin had found a gaudy, enamelled bronze dish, intricately decorated with a coiling enamelled ‘Celtic’ pattern and a Latin inscription around the rim. Originally it would have had a flat bow-tie-shaped handle (the scar where it was soldered on is still visible), and a flat, circular base. It was made in Roman times for drinking special liquids. Others like it have been found linked with the Roman baths in the city of Aquae Sulis (the modern-day city of Bath), and they may have been designed to scoop up and drink healing spring waters.
The Roman term for the item would have either been trulla, a pan with a handle, or patera, a shallow dish that normally doesn’t have a handle. Experts disagree on its correct Roman name, but all accept the term ‘pan’, despite the modern-day association with functional kitchen equipment.
The pattern on the pan is a ‘curvilinear scrollwork’ design, with eight round sections (roundels) with curving whirligig patterns inside them with blue, turquoise and red inlaid enamel. The enamel-inlaid inscription that runs around the whole pan without a break is the detail that really gets archaeologists fascinated. It’s because it links this treasure to the greatest Roman structure in Britain – Hadrian’s Wall.
The Wall
The Emperor Hadrian ordered construction to begin on the Wall in around 122AD, an unparalleled military fortification of turf banks and stone walls, 72 miles from west coast to east coast, separating the Romans from the northern ‘Barbarian’ tribes.
Like modern frontiers, it would have controlled access between the two regions, ensuring that only authorised and unarmed people travelled into the Roman province, and it would have prevented raiding on rural settlements near to the Wall. It was also a military base from which to police, protect and tax the native British communities, and to continue surveillance of the tribal leaders north of the Wall.
Incredibly, we don’t actually know what the Romans called Hadrian’s Wall themselves, but this little pan gives us our most intriguing clue to the puzzle. The inscription around the rim of the dish says:
MAIS COGGABATA VXELODVNVM CAMMOGLANNA RIGORE VALI AELI DRACONIS
These are clearly the names of four forts along the western sector of Hadrian’s Wall – Maius (Bowness-on-Solway), Coggabata (Drumburgh), Uxelodunum (Stanwix) and Camboglanna (Castlesteads), but the section RIGORE VALI AELI DRACONIS is harder to decipher, and experts have established a number of possibilities.
Rigore means ‘on the line of’ or ‘in order of’. Vali means ‘of the Wall’ or ‘of the Rampart’ (Vallum means ‘Rampart’ or ‘Wall’); Aeli is the family name of, amongst others, Emperor Hadrian.
So RIGORE VALI AELI could be the first direct archaeological reference to Hadrian’s Wall – ‘On the line of the Aelian Rampart’.
The alternative explanation is that Aeli refers to the family name of the person who owned the pan, rather than the emperor who built the Wall. Draconis is the personal name Draco or Dracon, so the owner of this bowl may well have been called Aelius Draco. That might mean the whole inscription reads ‘Aelius Draco at Maius, Coggabata, Uxelodunum and Camboglanna in their order along the Wall’.
“Draco isn’t a common Roman or British name, its origin is Greek – so it’s possible that this man was very far from home”
Draco isn’t a common Roman or British name, its origin is Greek – so it’s possible that this man was very far from home, either co-opted into the military or serving as a slave, and posted to the far northern frontier. The most popular theory is that this veteran soldier, Draco, was either awarded his enamelled dish as a keepsake after long years of good service, or he commissioned it himself as a memento of his time on the Wall.
“Quite how the pan ended up 200 miles south [of Hadrian’s Wall], in north Staffordshire, is a mystery”
This pan is somewhere between a tourist souvenir, a ‘places I’ve been’ piece of tour memorabilia, and an inscribed retirement gift. Today, our 21st-century soldiers serving in distant conflict zones regularly bring back local artefacts to commemorate their time on the front line, and it’s clearly a habit that’s been going on for millennia.
Quite how the pan ended up 200 miles south, in north Staffordshire, is a mystery. Perhaps Draco got a taste for British living and settled down with a local Romano-British lady. Roman soldiers weren’t officially allowed to marry until they had completed twenty-five years of military service and been discharged, although many had ‘unofficial’ families living in civilian settlements just outside Roman Forts. Just like collecting souvenirs, going out with the local ladies is also something soldiers have been doing for generations.
The Staffordshire Moorlands Ilam Pan was purchased by three museums working in partnership, so that as many people as possible get a chance to see it. The Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent is the regional museum closest to the findspot, the British Museum in London entered the partnership because the pan is of national importance, and the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle links the pan with the physical site of Hadrian’s Wall.
See also:
Hadrian’s Wall Coins
Crosby Garrett Helmet
Billingford Amulet
Silverdale Hoard
The unknown chief from a Viking hoard
Date: 900–910AD, Viking
Where, when and how found: Silverdale area, Lancashire; 2011; metal detecting
Finder: Darren Webster
Official valuation: £109,815
Where is it now? Lancashire Museums
www.lancashire.gov.uk/museums
The Silverdale Hoard is the third biggest Viking hoard ever discovered in the UK. Two hundred and one silver objects and coins were found in a crude sheet-lead container, including arm rings, ingots and the coin of a previously unrecorded ruler.
Finder Darren Webster stopped at the field, one of his regular sites, with a few hours to burn. When his detector gave off a signal he imagined it would be a coin, but then he saw fragments of lead. He realised the lead was a rough sheet folded in on itself, and when he picked it out of the ground, silver coins tumbled out of the bottom. He rang his wife to tell her that he had found Treasure.
When Darren got home, he called the landowner and the following morning he reported his incredible dis
covery to local Finds Liaison Officer, Dot Boughton, who arranged for the site to be excavated archaeologically.
In Viking times, the value of the hoard would have been huge: Gareth Williams, an expert at the British Museum, estimates that the hoard, totalling more than a kilo of silver, would easily have bought a whole herd of cattle – just one arm ring would be worth an ox.
The importance of the hoard
The artefacts and coins in the hoard show the wide trading and cultural contacts of the Vikings – spanning Ireland to Russia and across the Islamic world. The hoard had been carefully deposited, and three highly decorated arm rings were placed carefully inside one another. One of the rings has unusual terminals in the form of animal heads. These fancy rings were possibly given as rewards from leaders to loyal high-ranking warriors. Far from being feminine jewellery, these solid arm rings were worn by military men on their sword arms, indicating their allegiance and prowess in battle: The more rings you had, the more military and social power you possessed.
The plainer rings and fragments are ‘bullion-rings’, rather than jewellery items. In a mixed economy, Vikings used pieces of solid silver as bullion currency. These arm rings appear to have been cast in multiples of the Viking ‘ounce’, equivalent to around 25 modern grams. They could then be cut into pieces, or melted and recast to a different weight.
A number of pieces in the Silverdale hoard show evidence of cuts made into the solid metal. These cut marks show where the quality of the metal has been tested. Before the invention of technology that could digitally measure the proportions of different metals in an alloy, and in many parts of the world still today, skilled metal smiths and traders could judge the purity of precious metal from its feel and softness. By cutting a testing nick into a solid ingot or ring, you can check that you aren’t being swindled with fake ingots with a silver coating, or silver mixed with a base metal like lead or copper. If silver was mixed with a cheaper metal it would feel wrong under the knife.
The coins date the hoard to the years around 900–910AD. This was a time when the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Elder, son of King Alfred ‘the Great’, was pushing northwards, reclaiming territory from Vikings who had settled across the kingdom of Northumbria. The boundary of their territory, known later as the Danelaw, established in a treaty between Alfred and the Viking leader Guthrum, was overstepped, and the Danes fled or submitted to their new English overlords. Vikings were also expelled from Dublin around this time, by the native Irish tribes. Some of the artefacts in the Silverdale Hoard show artistic links with pieces that were being created and traded around the Irish Sea – it’s possible that the Silverdale treasures have something to do with the persecuted Dublin Vikings.
Despite the Viking decline in the early 900s, their influence is still with us – including in our flesh and blood. Viking-origin surnames like Rigby, Thompson and Robinson are more common in areas that were under Viking control 1,000 years ago, and researchers at the University of Leicester have shown that many people also carry genetic markers that indicate a strong Norse heritage. Viking men are known to have married native women, but genetic material on the Y-Chromosome, passed down from father to son, retains an unbroken link to a Viking past. Up to 50% of old Lancashire families have Norse ancestry.
Lost in translation
Two coins from the Silverdale Hoard are particularly interesting. The first is a contemporary forgery of a Frankish coin, which is plated with silver, but with a base metal core. Surprisingly, it wasn’t weeded out by its Viking owner with a test cut.
The second is a coin bearing the mysterious name ‘Airdeconut’. Not recorded in any documentary sources, this Viking ruler, with enough power to commission coins to be struck in his name, was previously lost to history. Experts have speculated that Airdeconut is a local interpretation of the Danish name, Harthacnut, which literally means ‘Hard Knot’. It’s possible that the person creating the die to stamp the coins was Anglo-Saxon, and couldn’t fully catch the foreign-sounding name.
A later Harthacnut ruled England from 1040–1042, but the ruler on the Silverdale Hoard coin was alive and minting coins 120 years earlier. Perhaps more finds will shed light on this mystery ruler, his exploits and his fate. Despite the length and importance of the Viking reign in Britain, in many regards, we know surprisingly little about them.
On the other side of the coin is DNS (standing for Dominus) and REX (king), arranged in a cross.
Viking leaders readily adopted Christianity when they began to permanently settle in Britain, from the 860s onwards. Conversion meant that their Anglo-Saxon counterparts in the south were more willing to engage in trading activities and alliances with them. It seems that the Viking settlers kept their connection to the Norse gods and goddesses like Thor, Odin and Freyja, but also incorporated Christian imagery and characters into their lives and goods.
We don’t know why the person or people who buried the hoard never returned for it. This was an incredibly dynamic period, where threats might have come from other Viking settlers as much as advancing Anglo-Saxon forces from the south. We don’t have many written sources that document these centuries from the Viking perspective, so we rely heavily on the accidental discovery and archaeological recovery of artefacts like these at Silverdale. Numerous hoards are likely to have been buried at this time, but only the ones that were never retrieved are left, waiting for someone to discover them. Someone’s loss 1,000 years ago is very much our gain today.
See also:
Chalgrove Hoard
Vale of York Viking Hoard
West Yorkshire Ring Hoard
Chinese Coin Hoard
107 coins from the time of the Opium Wars
Date: Around 1659–1850, Post Medieval
Where, when and how found: Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria; 2011; metal detecting
Finder: Dave Taylor
Where is it now? Hoard was donated to The Dock Museum, Barrow
www.dockmuseum.org.uk
This intriguing find was discovered by Dave Taylor on farmland in Barrow-in-Furness – 107 circular copper-alloy coins with square holes and traces of a thread which once strung the coins together. All the coins had what appeared to be Chinese characters stamped into them. Dave reported his discovery to his local Finds Liaison Officer, Dot Boughton, and the coins were identified as ‘cash coins’ of east Asia, mostly China. All but three of them are from the Chinese Qing dynasty, which ruled from 1644 to 1911.
The coins are all of the same denomination, 1-cash (like a ‘one-pound’ coin). The inscriptions indicate when the coins were issued. But the majority of the coins appear to be underweight forgeries – only eight coins are probably official issues.
The fact that they’re fakes means it’s quite difficult to determine when exactly most of the coins were cast. According to their inscriptions, the coins range in date from 1659 to 1850. The earliest coin was probably cast between 1659 and 1661, and the obverse (front side) has the character inscription Shunzhi tongbao – ‘Shunzhi’ is the name of the emperor, ‘tongbao’ literally means ‘circulating treasure’. The majority of the coins (56) have the inscriptions Daoguang tongbao and were probably cast in the Daoguang reign period (1821–1850) or later. They’re probably the latest coins in the hoard. What we know for certain is that among the eight official coins, the earliest date to between 1736–1795. Two coins in the hoard are from Vietnam and date to the 18th–19th century.
Stringing coins together was a common practice in China and other countries in east Asia, and it’s not that unusual to find some Vietnamese coins amongst Chinese issues. But why were these coins buried in Barrow-in-Furness?
Why Barrow-in-Furness?
The findspot offered no clues for why the coins had been buried there. We don’t know if they were buried permanently, or intended to be retrieved. What’s certain is that these coins wouldn’t have had any monetary value in Cumbria, except as novel, exotic trinkets. Perhaps that’s why they were buried or dumped – without any mone
tary value, the owner lost interest in keeping hold of them.
It’s also possible that they were buried temporarily, and the owner was planning on taking the coins back to China, where they would have had monetary value. In the 1850s the coins, if accepted as authentic, would have bought you around two kilos of rice in China. Which leads us to the most intriguing question in this Chinese Coin mystery story – who actually brought the coins to Barrow in the first place?
Whodunnit?
In 1839 an aggressive and brutal conflict known as the First Opium War began between China and the British Empire. The British had introduced the habit of smoking opium with tobacco to China in the late 1700s, and throughout the 1800s they increased production of opium in India and sold it for increasingly vast sums to now-addicted Chinese buyers.
Chinese officials led by the Daoguang emperor were outraged, and tried to stop the trade that was turning their people into junkies. The British responded with a brutal and barbaric series of attacks on Chinese communities along the coast, finally forcing the Emperor to agree to a ‘peace’ treaty in 1842. The bullying tactics of the British colonial leaders won the day – they secured a large sum of compensation, and the rights to sell opium to the Chinese with even greater impunity, fixed taxation and the territory of Hong Kong, a colony Britain kept until 1997. A young MP in England, William Gladstone (later Prime Minister), challenged the morality of the Opium War in Parliament, declaring that ‘a War more unjust in its origin, a War more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know.’