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The Skipton Bridge Hoard – by Gaenor Rudall & Olivia Farrow, Collections Volunteers

Collections Volunteers Gaenor Rudall and Olivia Farrow have been working with our Curator of Numismatics, Andrew Woods, to research a collection of medieval coins – the Skipton Bridge Hoard.

This year we have been working on a hoard of medieval coins found in Yorkshire, near Thirsk, in 1949.

We know from an article written shortly afterwards that they were discovered by a man called William Plant in a field on farmland at Skipton Bridge, near a bridge over the river at Skipton on Swale. He found a pottery jar packed with 383 silver coins, mostly dating from the later 13th and 14th centuries.

They were declared treasure trove, with 27 of them going to the British Museum, 60 to Ripon Museum, and 126 of them coming to the Yorkshire Museum. Many years later, in 1997, 74 more coins, mostly pennies and dating from the same time, were unearthed in this field by metal detectorists. These coins were also declared to be treasure trove and were returned to their finders.

It’s the 126 coins from the 1949 find that we’ve been documenting, photographing them and adding them to Adlib, the museum’s cataloguing system. Most of them are pennies, with 21 halfgroats (worth two pence) and 15 groats (four pence). We noted their approximate date, where they were minted and under which king, their weight, diameter and condition, and we transcribed any legible inscriptions.

As non-specialists, we had a great deal of help from two people – the curator in charge of coins, Andy Woods, was always available to give advice and to help us decipher the more worn or unusual inscriptions. And at some point in the past a curator had laid out all the coins in trays, together with a note of where each coin was struck and under which king.

This was invaluable to us – to the untutored eye the coins almost all look remarkably similar, despite covering a time span of over 130 years.

Here is one of the better preserved coins (YORYM:2015.700.31):

The obverse, or front, shows a forward-facing (male) head with a crown and wavy hair, surrounded by an inscription with the king’s name. Unlike on modern coins, the image was not intended to be a realistic portrait of the monarch, more as an established and widely respected symbol of quality and continuity.

To complicate matters, all the coins issued by Edward I, II and III show the name but do not indicate which of the three is depicted. The reverse has a cross with three pellets in each quarter. This is known as the long-cross design, introduced to make it obvious when a coin had been clipped (its edges cut off) for its silver content (and therefore an attempt to prevent it from happening).

Despite this, almost all the coins we examined had been slightly clipped. The reverse also has an inscription indicating where the coin was minted, and the larger coins – the groats and halfgroats- have an extra legend – POSUI DEUM ADIUTORE MEUM – meaning I have made God my helper. Most of the coins, particularly the pennies, are quite worn, making the inscriptions sometimes difficult to read.

The coins have only slight variations in their design, such as in the details of the king’s crown, the occasional tiny mark such as a fleur-de-lis on his chest and, of course, in the inscription around his head.

This changed according to which territories each king was claiming at the time (a few include France, for example). And two of the coins, minted in Ireland, show the king’s head within a triangle.

Looking at the range of ages of the coins, we know that the earliest was dated 1279 and the latest is from the first decade of the 15th century.

Here is one of the earliest coins, from 1280 (YORYM:2015.700.46):

And here is one of the later coins, from the early 15th century (YORYM:2015.700.119):

They show a remarkable similarity in their design, despite their difference in age. The later coin is fairly worn, so we know that it was quite well used before being placed in the hoard. As there are no coins dating from the time of Henry V, who was on the throne from 1413, it means we can be fairly confident that the coins were probably lost or buried by around 1412.

The face value of all the coins found in the pot was £2 2s 7d. In this period this would have been equivalent to a labourer’s wage for a whole year, with a pair of shoes costing 5d, so this hoard represents a substantial amount of money to a working person. The coins were collected together in a pot, so may have been hidden by being carefully buried in the ground. As to why they were never dug up again, we will almost certainly never know.

Take a look at our other blog entries for more research by our volunteers on our Numismatics collection at York Museums Trust, or find out more about volunteering on our website here.