[Archport] Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire hoard saved by £1.3m heritage grant

["Paulo Monteiro" <pmonteiro@ntasa.pt>]

Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire hoard saved by £1.3m heritage grant

The Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure found last year will receive a £1.3m Heritage Memorial Fund grant to allow it to remain in Midlands museums

Pyramid mounts and an inscribed strip from the Anglo-Saxon gold Staffordshire hoard which has now received a £1.3m Heritage grant to meet the £3.3m total required for it to remain in Midlands museums. Photograph: Staffordshire hoard website/PA

A grant of £1,285,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) will keep the glittering treasures of the Staffordshire hoard, the most spectacular heap of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, in the region where an amateur metal detector found it last summer after it spent 1,300 years buried in a nondescript field.

The grant goes to Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent museums, which will share the treasure, having raised the £3.3m necessary to pay Terry Herbert, who found the gold, and farmer Fred Johnson, the owner of the field where it was discovered.

Unusually for the fund, when the trustees met today there was no argument about the extraordinary quality of the hoard, or the merits of making the grant. Dame Jenny Abramsky, chair of the NHMF, said: "The Staffordshire hoard is an extraordinary heritage treasure. It is exactly the sort of thing the National Heritage Memorial Fund was set up to save, stepping in as the 'fund of last resort' when our national heritage is at risk, as a fitting memorial to those who have given their lives in the service of our nation. We're delighted, in our 30th anniversary year, to be able to make sure it stays just where it belongs, providing rare insights into one of the more mysterious periods of our history."

"Frankly they'd have been demented not to give the money," David Starkey, the historian who led the £3.3m appeal, said, welcoming the announcement. He has labelled the 1,500 pieces of jewel-studded gold, which appear to have been wrenched violently off their original metal, leather and wooden mounts, "gangland bling".

"This is by far the most important archaeological discovery in Britain since the second world war, and beyond that this is a find – of the most extraordinary beauty, brilliance and technical sophistication – which has really caught the imagination of the public."

The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, said: "Thanks to this grant, these superb items will be able to stay – and be enjoyed – where they belong: in the Midlands where they were discovered."

The British Museum, which would once inevitably have been seen as the natural home for a find of international importance, gave its blessing and practical support to the campaign. The total includes thousands of small donations from members of the public, some sent from as far as Australia, and a £300,000 grant from the Art Fund charity, which launched the appeal. The museums, backed by their local authorities, put in £100,000 each.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: "We have been absolutely bowled over by the enthusiasm and fascination the Staffordshire hoard has sparked amongst the British public, as well as visitors from abroad. It is wonderful news that the NHMF has enabled the target of £3.285m to be reached ahead of schedule, and I hope that this will give the West Midlands a head start with the next stage in fundraising for the conservation, research and display of the treasure."

When the find was announced in September the news went round the world. The gold was found by Terry Herbert, a passionate amateur metal detector whose best previous find was a broken piece of medieval horse harness, on farmer Fred Johnson's land near Lichfield in July. When Herbert had covered his dining room table with gold, and was becoming thoroughly alarmed at the scale of his find, he called in the experts. The archaeologists and forensic scientists who hit the field – under the cover story from the local police that they were investigating a murder – found most of the pieces just below the surface, and some tangled in clumps of grass which had grown up through the delicate filigree gold: eventually they retrieved 2.5kg of silver and 5kg of gold. One gold-and-garnet Anglo-Saxon sword pommel would be regarded as a find of international importance: there were scores in the hoard, along with unique and enigmatic objects still baffling the archaeologists such as the wriggling gold serpents, and a biblical inscription on a strap of gold folded in half like a shirt collar.

Starkey said: "These are pieces from the period which we were brought up to call the dark ages, and they prove that it was no such thing. When the Normans invaded in 1066, they may have been better organised chaps – but it wasn't that they were the civilised ones invading a primitive backwater, they came because they were desperate to get their hands on the wealth of Harold's England."

Local pride and interest in the treasure is intense. The exhibitions at the Birmingham city museum, immediately after the find was announced in September, and at the Potteries museum in Stoke-on-Trent last month when the hoard returned for the first time to Staffordshire, broke records at both museums with crowds queueing for hours to see the treasures.

More than 52,000 people visited the Stoke museum in three weeks, donating more than £152,000 to the appeal, including a single anonymous donation of £50,000 on the eve of the exhibition.

Many of the pieces are still caked in mud, and some still tangled with blades of grass. While careful conservation work continues, scholars will be poring over the treasures for decades to come.

"There could be blood on them as well. These pieces still have a lot to tell us," said Deb Klemperer, the archaeologist and curator at the Potteries, who was reduced to tears at their beauty when she first saw the gold last summer.

Starkey said the gold, and its new homes in Birmingham and the Potteries, will redraw the map of Anglo-Saxon England.

"These pieces change our understanding not just of history but of geography, swinging the axis away from Kent and Wessex and Northumbria, which we are fairly knowledgeable about, to the highly important but very little understood kingdom of Mercia, of which we know so little."

And he added the collection would have a positive impact on the Midlands of today. "They will put new heart and hope into a region which has suffered terribly through de-industrialisation, with the loss of thousands of metal working jobs, and literally the shattering of the Potteries."

In Stoke Hazel Lyth, city council cabinet member for economic development and culture, said they were thrilled at the grant, "a fantastic gesture that will cap a phenomenal fundraising campaign", but warned that the fundraising goes on.

"Acquiring these unparalleled treasures is essential, but it is just the beginning. We still very much need the public's support in helping us to unlock the secrets of this amazing collection. It will cost a further £1.7m to develop a Mercian trail which will take in Lichfield and Tamworth to link up the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom. We need to interpret and research the hoard, so that we can discover where it came from, why it was put in Staffordshire soil, and find the answers to many other questions."

Although the major exhibition has closed, some of the pieces remain on display at Stoke, Birmingham, and at the British Museum in London.

 

 

PAULO ALEXANDRE MONTEIRO

 

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