r.lwgrq'l$r{,'!r
We shall see that it is likely that some, at least,
of them entered collections. No record of the
fate of the other gold foil is known.
A GOLD FOIL
REDISCOVERED
B.J.N. Edwards
On 12 February, 1815, a find was made on
Halton Moor, Lancashire, which should have
been declared as treasure and submitted to a
Most of the foregoing has been general knowledge for many years, though the hoard has
received less attention than it merits. The cup
must have originated somewhere in or near
Carolingian Europe, but precise parallels for its
distinctive decorative have proved elusive. Of
the coins, the identification of 379, all of Cnut
and mostly minted at York, is known. 21 were
Treasure Trove inquest. The discovery, made by
a farmer who was cultivating land recently
enclosed under the terms of the Halton Enclosure Act of 1797t, consisted of a silver gilt cup
or bowl in which were 860 silver coins, a very
fine plaited silver wire torque or neck ring and
six gold discs or foils.2 The finder is not named
in contemporary accounts, so it is not possible
to identiff his allotment within the 957
}$r
$!{ tu15
acres
covered by the Enclosure Act.
The items in the discovery were rapidly dispersed. They came into the hands of a Lancaster
jeweller named Muncaster and he sent the cup,
the neck ring, 400 of the coins and two of the
gold foils to a man named Walker in London.
He is stated by Michael Jones, writing to T.D.
Whitaker,3 to have lived in Bedford Square and
to have been related to 'Mr. Ford of Lancaster'.
The remaining 460 coins and four gold foils
were distributed locally. A few coins came into
the hands of local collectors and the ownership
of nine of these has been established by
Pennney.4 We can add to this information the
fact that one of the gold foils was in Whitaker's
possession. He believed it to show 'the rude
figure of a lion'.5 We can only presume that
most of the remainder of the hoard was melted
said to be Danish, without more precise identifi-
cation. Thompson8 suggested that they might
have been Viking coins struck in East Anglia.
The neck ring has been authoritatively assessed
as the finest Viking neck ring from Britain.e
This brings us to the foils, and again, as in the
case of the cup, we are faced with exotic
objects. They are embossed on one face and
incuse on the other, presumably implying raising on a die. They have been pierced with two
rather rough holes suggesting attachment to
some object rather than being'for inserting silk
threads in order to be worn about the neck' as
Whitaker suggests. The design (see fig.) has
been variously interpreted, the suggestions,
apart from Whitaker's, already cited, including:
'a human head in the rudest style of workmanship;t0 'a dolphin or fish of some kind',lz and 'a
lion's head with its tongue hanging out'.12
down.
Of the objects sent to London, 85 of the coins
were 'taken by the Trustees of the British
Museum as also one of the gold pieces'.6 The
cup and the neck ring were later acquired by
(Sk) A. W. Franks and came eventually to the
British Museum as part of the Franks Bequest.T
The remaining coins disappeared from view,
though some of them may have survived as
unprovenanced collectors' pieces.
11
A general basis of a helmeted head seems to be
the most likely interpretation. But where did
figures are sufficiently close to make the case
for identifying the Copenhagen foil with the
second of the two sent to London in 1815
they originate ? This remains a mystery, but one
attempt to elucidate the problem did at least
yield an interesting piece of information.
When the find was published
in
almost unassailable.
For example, the newspaper report
already
quoted gets the dimensions of the cup totally
wrong. What, in that sase, are we to make of the
casual remark in the same account that the cup
was'cased in lead' ? Very interesting if true, and
precisely the kind of detail which would not
have interested coin collectors and people of
similar interests in the early nineteenth century.
Whitaker's account, oniy a few years after the
find, tells us that there were a t[ousand coins.
This is almost certainly wrong, as both the
newspaper account and Taylor Combe's publi-
1817, the
author, Taylor Combe, opined that many objects
similar to the foils had been found in Denmark.
Since no other parallels were forthcoming, the
help of the National Museum in Copenhagen
was sought. In reply to my QueV, the Assistant
Keeper of the Department of Antiquities,
Morten Axboe, stated that the Museum did
indeed possess one very similar objeclt3 but
that it was as much of a puzzJe to them as to
me.
I
.\^/E,IGHT STATED
IN GRAINS. 1AI7
2
A
19-3
t.E
B
t6-2
l.o5
4
3
\vEICI{T
(GRAMS)
CON\/ERSION
TO GRAMS
B.M.
COi\TVERSION
TO GR-AINS
t9.54
1.266
N,ru.t)k. 1.o2
t5.74
CON\/ER.SION RATE: r GRAM : 15.4324 GRAINS
Tlris shw3 in colurnns I and 2 tbc wciglrts quotcd in 1817 for the r:yo gold foils sent to
to graffi. rsing the rate ghm.
In colurrrns 3 and 4 are
shwn the weights of tlre trro foils knwn to 3urt/ive, in grarns, and the re.conwcrsion of tbcs€ rcaults to
grains. It will be sccn, by cornparing colurnn 2 with 3 and I wirh 4, that Lhe discrcpancy is small
enouglr to bc rccounted for b5r the likcly inaccurac;r of rcales in 1815.
Tablc.
I-.ondon in 1815 artd thc conwerion of tlre
It had been published, looking slightly out of
place, in the Museum's catalogue of bracteates,
but there was one further important piece of
information the object had been bought by the
Museum at Sotheby's in London in 1858 !
It came from the collection of the Rev. T.F.
Dymock and was accompanied by twelve other
items. The lot was described thus: 'Early Danish
[coins], some Bracteates, one in gold, rare, and
cation specifu 860. Again, we know that the
find was made in February, 1815, and Combe's
description is dated from the British Museum
on 4 April, 1815. Nevertheless, James Basire's
two plates which accompany it carry the inscription 'Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, January 1, 1815'.
NOTES
l.
some scarce pennies, some labelled.'
2.
The case for identi$ing the Copenhagen foil
with the second of the two sent to London in
1815 seemed quite strong, but incapable of
ultimate resolution. If the coins accompanying
the foil in the auction lot were of Cnut, the case
would be strengthened, but this I do not yet
Lancashire Record Office AE 5/6.
Combe,
T.,
'Account
l8
of
some Saxon Antiquities found near
(18 ) 199-202. Anothei account occurs in
Whitakcr, T.D., An History of Richmondshire, vol. 2 (1823) Z4Z-243.
Lancaster', Archaeologia
3. Whitaker, cited in n.2, 242
Find Some Problems of provenance,
9gryn_qt^i1i9n_Od Dispersal', Lancashire Archaeological Bulletin, vol. 4,
4. Penney, S., The Halton Moor
No.5 (1978) 22-23.
5. Whitaker, cited in n.2,242.
know.
6.Whitaker, cited in n.2, 242.The Accession Number of the B.M. foil is
oA 3393.
However, one other piece of information, while
also not conclusive, seems to me to be very
significant. The original publication gives the
weights, in grains, of the t'wo foils sent to
London. We also know the weights, in grams,
of the B.M. and Copenhagen foils. When these
are converted and tabulated, it will be seen that
the weights are within 3Yo or less of those
quoted in 1817. Given the likely degree of
accuracy of scales at that date, I feel that these
7. The cup lt* bgqn discussed in Wamers, E., 'Pyxides imaginatae: Zur
Ikonogqphie und Funktion karolingischer Silber6echer', Germania 69: I
(r99r) 97-r52.
8.5Thompson, J.D.A., lnventory of British Coin Hoards, A.D. 600-1500
(r956) 67,
9-Graham Campbell, J.A., The Cuerdale Hoard: Comparisons and
Context' in Graham Campbell, J.A., (ed.) Viking Treasi.rre from the
North West - The Cuerdale Hoard in its Context (1992) I13.
10. Combe, cited in n.2,200.
I
l.
Preston Chronicle, 25 February, 1815.
12. National Museum of Denmark, lnventory, 1858.
13. Inv.
t2
No. 17249.