WEST NORFOLK MEDIEVAL GOLD COIN FIND

   

A hoard of early medieval gold coins discovered by two people with metal detectors is the largest of its kind ever found in England, reports Nadia Khomami for the Guardian.

Buried in what is now West Norfolk around 600 C.E., the trove of 131 coins and 4 gold objects is larger than a cache famously found at Sutton Hoo in 1939. (Earlier this year, the Netflix movie The Dig drew renewed attention to the excavation, which unearthed a purse containing 37 gold coins, 3 blank gold discs and 2 gold ingots, among other rare artifacts.) The region where both hoards were found—now eastern England—was once part of the Kingdom of East Anglia.

Prior to the newly publicized cache's discovery, the largest known coin hoard from the early medieval era (around 410 to 1066 C.E.) was a purse with 101 coins found at Crondall in Hampshire in 1828. According to Michel Shutterly of CoinWeek, the so-called Crondall Hoard was either lost or hidden between 635 and 650. The majority of the coins were gold pieces known as thrymsas. A separate hoard found in Staffordshire in 2009 constitutes the largest trove of precious metal from the period, but it contains no coins.

According to the statement, most of the coins are Frankish tremisses, a small gold coin minted in what is now France during the Late Antiquity period (around 284 to 700 C.E.). The cache also contains nine gold solidi, a larger coin from the Byzantine Empire worth about three tremisses.

To read the complete article, see:
See the Largest Trove of Early Medieval Gold Coins Ever Found in England (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hoard-of-gold-coins-is-englands-largest-early-medieval-find-180979022/)

To read the complete article, see:
Largest Anglo-Saxon gold coin hoard found in Norfolk (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-59151380)

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