PROJECT NEWS

The latest news is at the top....

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Coin hoards are of paramount importance for work on coinage in the British Isles and Ireland during the Middle Ages. The British Numismatic Society has had a leading role in the publication of hoards since its foundation more than a century ago, and there is great potential in extending this role with the development of this new online resource. Murray Andrews, writing in 2019^[1], noted that “….previous reviews of medieval coin hoard evidence by Thompson (1956) and Allen (2002; 2015a) are brief and of limited scope, the former being primarily concerned with the relationship between coin hoards and documented political events, and the latter with specific aspects of their numismatic contents and spatial distributions. Without a basic knowledge of the pattern of coin hoards, we cannot hope to achieve a rounded understanding of hoarding as a socio-economic phenomenon, and without this, it is difficult to see how anything but the most banal historical conclusions can be drawn from hoard evidence”.

This website presents a comprehensive hoard data set which can be interrogated in both time and space to reveal distribution patterns. The mapping module allows the location of hoards of varying deposition dates to be seen, and thus contributes to a better understanding of the distribution of known hoards.  Included are hoards deposited up to the beginning of the silver debasement of 1544; thus hoards ending in the 1^st or 2^nd coinage of Henry VIII are included, and those hoards ending in his 3^rd coinage are excluded.

Not only are the coins summarised for each hoard but we also note any other items included in the hoard, as well as any evidence of a container,  the use of which may indicate that the hoard was intended for later recovery.  Hoards without coins are excluded, as are hoards of unknown location. To be included, a hoard only needs a minimum of two coins which are believed to have been deposited or lost together at the same time. Thus the database contains a spectrum of hoard types ranging from say just two coins dropped by a labourer working in the fields, to a lead casket containing thousands of coins and deliberately secreted into the wall of a mediveal building.

It has not been the intent that full hoard descriptions are given, but rather that summary comments are accompanied by relevant references for each hoard, such that the researcher can pursue hoards of interest. References for each hoard include not only printed journal articles and relevant books, but also selected relevant online resources.  Hyperlinks are provided whenever possible. Comprehensive search fuctionality allows the user to filter in on particular hoard types of interest.

The vast majority of known hoards from the period of interest have already been entered into the database; a few which had not been uploaded at the time this website went live are now in the process of being added.  Furthermore, new hoards are being frequently found, and these will be added as soon as sufficient information becomes available. Progress in adding further hoards or software changes will be noted in the NEWS section. 

In a project such as this there are bound to be errors and omissions - please do contact the webmaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) if you have a suggested change or addition.  

Hoard locations – where the location of a hoard has already been published in the public domain, then that location has been repeated here. For many hoards it has only been possible to give approximate locations, and for these an estimate is provided as to how accurate the location is.  For some hoards it has been considered necessary to disguise the true location in order to protect the site from illegal metal detecting.   Where a hoard's location is only vaguely known it has been included in this compilation if the county is known, however where a hoard's location is unknown to county level it has generally been omitted, as for example the 1993 Baldwin parcel.

Hoard deposition dates - the data inputter has used their judgement when published data are at variance in their interpretation of hoard deposition dates. Where users have alternate views based on their relevant detailed knowledge they are invited to contact us with their reasoning and we will usually be happy to update the hoard record accordingly. 

Acknowledgement : The summary comments and other data for each hoard have been gathered from the references quoted, and so acknowledgment is made to  the many numismatists, historians and others who have in the past contributed to the written hoard record.

^[1] Andrews, M, 2019, “Coin Hoarding in Medieval England and Wales, c.973-1544: Behaviours, motivations, and mentalités”, BAR Publishing - British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd.

MCHBI PROJECT TEAM

Martin Allen is Senior Curator Medieval Money at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the Editor of the British Numismatic Journal. He administers the Fitzwilliam Museum's online Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds (EMC). His main field of research is the monetary history of medieval Britain and Ireland after 1066.

Rob is the Website Officer for the BNS and also handles the day-to-day coordination and supervision of the MCHBI project. He additionally runs the BNS Research Blog, to which he occasionally contributes articles, particularly on the coinage of Henry III. As well as numismatics, his interests include archaeology and history; and his academic background is in geology.  Having now retired from a long career in the international oil industry he now has the time to pursue his interests, of which this project is one.  Any questions about MCHBI may be emailed to him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Project Advisor -

Gary Oddie

Gary has been collecting and researching coins, counterfeits and tokens etc since a very young age. Following training in physics and later fluid engineering, he spent 24 years in research in oilfield fluid mechanics in the oil industry. He took early retirement in 2020 and is now focussing on writing up the many unfinished numismatic projects accumulated over the decades. He is past editor of the Token Corresponding Society Bulletin and has been co-organiser of four Token Congresses. He has given talks to many numismatic societies and as well as initiating the Contributors project for the BNS, has written many short notes for the Token Corresponding Society Bulletin (Link) and the British Numismatic Society Blog.

Project Advisor - Eleanor Ghey

Eleanor Ghey works in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum as Curator: Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards. She records and advises on Iron Age and Roman hoards submitted for consideration under the Treasure Act 1996. Prior to this she worked on a collaborative project with Leicester University collecting data on all recorded coin hoards of this date from Britain.

Murray Andrews is Associate Professor in Numismatics at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research interests centre on the archaeology of ancient and historic economies, with a particular focus on coinage and monetary activity in northwest Europe during the later Middle Ages and early modern period (c.1250-1750). He was previously a lecturer in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Worcester.  Author of the book “Coin Hoarding in Medieval England and Wales, c.973-1544”.

Research Assistant - -Josh Catermole

Josh Cattermole is a keen collector and has been collecting coins since he was 15. Ever since, he has collected coinage from a variety of countries and periods. For English coinage, his favourite period is later Medieval, particularly the 15th century. Within this scope, he has shown himself willing to aid those who have questions on coin identification. His current numismatic speciality is the study of coinage from the Republic of Venice, with a particular focus being the circulation of Soldini, or ‘’Galley Halfpence’’, in England in the 15th and 16th centuries, with a detailed book on the earlier period due for publication in late 2022.

Research Assistant - Luke Mundy

(May-Oct 2022)

Luke is from Bristol, and started collecting in 2020. After the covid 19 pandemic, he started the Hammered Corner YouTube channel to inspire new and upcoming collectors and numismatists. He collects coins from Celtic - Stuart, focusing in on the Short Cross and Tudor coinages. He attended the South Gloucestershire university, and has been working part-time for Essex coins since 2021.   He is now looking for a full-time numismatic position.

Will Wilson's numismatic story began at the University of Reading where he gained a BA and MA in archaeology with his MA thesis focussing on the ritual deposition of Iron Age and Roman coinage at Romano-Celtic temple sites. He currently works at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge where he has worked with the Department of Coins and Medals documenting their collection. This has led to a strange obsession with hyperinflation currency from Germany and Austria in the 1920's and a real interest in how the public interact with numismatic collections in museums.

Research Assistant -       Lucy Moore - from Jan. 2023

Lucy Moore is a postgraduate researcher at the University of York, where she is studying the Northumbrian pennies commonly known as stycas, with a particular interest in their interactions with the Viking Great Army. She also works part-time in the curatorial team at Leeds Museums & Galleries and is UK Wikimedian of the Year 2022 (link). 

The BNS has developed a website application which provides information on Medieval coin hoards from Britain and Ireland deposited between about 450 and 1544 AD.  It is more comprehensive than previously published compilations, and is being continuously added to, thus making it a highly useful resource for researchers as well as being of interest to numismatists, historians and others.  For further information on the project please press the ABOUT button, and for a guide on how to use the application it's the HELP button.

USER GUIDE

The concept behind this new database is to be able to search for hoards of interest, either within a specified area, or within a specified time range for either deposition date or discovery date. Relevant hoards will then be available in a PDF report, which contains relevant references for your further research.  Where references are available online then clickable links will be provided in the Hoards Report.

Click anywhere on the MCHBI Home Page map to get started, and use your browser's back button at any time to leave the mapping module.

The following explains the functions of the various buttons located around the map:

Click on A, or B, for an explanation of side icons.    C marks the position of the MAIN MENU tab, which is detailed below.

Tip: When a user may wish to use polygons.

See below for details of the four main tabs:

 Settings

The settings menu is self-explantory.  The illustration shows the default settings which are selected whenever the application is started.  Any changes to these defaults are lost when a user closes the website.  To save settings use the filter settings button (4th icon at top right).

Record Data Quality, or Hoard Record Quality, "HRQ" is a new feature expected to go live in March 2023.  Read about it here

Note: Hoard Location Accuracy

Sliders

A user can select hoards of interest by moving the slider end points. In the example, above hoards are selected whose minimum deposition date (tpq) is between AD 805 and AD 960, having a minimum of 25 coins but no more than 190, and which were discovered from 1901 onwards. In this case 16 hoards were located in the database which meet these criteria. These hoards can be viewed on the map, and the user can download a report (2nd icon at top right).

HRQ is Hoard Record Quality, and is described under Settings above.

Working with the hoards displayed on the map.

Simple Search

Here, in Simple Search, one can search hoard data or reference data.  For an example of when to use quotation marks click here

Advanced Search

The above shows an example where the user has selected hoards containing 10 or more coins and issued by one or more Plantaganet rulers. The Advanced Search feature is very flexible, and can be used to interrogate the database for almost any set of conditions imaginable.

Note that both the Simple and Advanced search methods can be used in combination with the "sliders" - i.e. a user may select hoards from a number of coin issuers in the advanced search, and then go to the "sliders"  to further restrict the hoard selection.  This can sometimes be quicker as the hoards update in real time as the slider bars are adjusted.  However use of two search methods at once is not a necessity as all searches can easily be accomplished with Advanced Search once a user becomes familiar with it.

Hoards & Finds from IRELAND

Irish hoards have been grouped by the four provinces:

ULSTER   MUNSTER   LEINSTER   CONNAGHT