Hoard of Viking silver found at castle in 1950 to go on public display at Chester bank
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
Hundreds of Viking coins found by workmen at castle 65 years ago to go on public display at city bank
© Courtesy Chester UnlockedAt the time of the burial, Chester was inhabited by Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Scandinavians and Hiberno-Norse groups. More than 1,000 years later, the hoard is about to go on public display for 11 days at a branch of bank Santander in the city.
A report on the treasure from the Chester Chronicle© Courtesy Chester UnlockedLittle notice was initially taken of the find, although several workers salvaged souvenirs. A re-excavation was only carried out by Graham Webster, the Curator of the Grosvenor Museum, after the niece of one of the finders took the pennies into her school for identification.
Together with his assistant, Alan Warhurst, Webster found even more coins, causing the City Coroner, David Hughes, to call an inquest.
The coins are inscribed with marks suggesting they were minted in Chester, Southampton, York, Bedford, Huntingdon and Oxford, adorned with the names of the Saxon Kings Aethelstan (925-939 AD), Edmund (939-936 AD), Edred (949-955 AD), Eadwig (955-959 AD) and Edgar (959-975 AD).
A set of 43 silver pennies were previously found at the city’s Eastgate Row in 1857, five years before 40 similar coins surfaced beneath a new entrance to St John the Baptist Church.
“We’ve had lots of enquiries from people desperate to know what we were holding back,” says Emily Ghazarian, who is part of the Hoot’s Route history and heritage project which began in June and will continue to reveal treasures from the area until 2016.
“We always promised there would be a special treasure revealed as the final artefact on the trail map.
“All of the treasures were found in Cheshire so it makes absolute sense to put them on display right here, in the heart of Chester city centre, where people can see and admire them up close.”
- On display at Santander, Foregate Street, Chester from October 13-24 as part of Hoot's Route.
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Three places to see Viking finds in
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Norwich Castle has one of the best collections of Anglo-Saxon material in the country. Designated by the government as being of outstanding quality, the collection contains a huge variety of objects of beauty and historic significance.
Tarbat Discovery Centre, Ross-shire
Marvel at the sheer beauty of the medieval stonework and read in depth accounts of the many rare items uncovered at the site, including the Pictish Sculpture and the Viking Silver Horde in the Treasury.
JORVIK Viking Centre, York
Explore York's Viking history exactly where our archaeologists found the remains of the original Viking-Age City of 'Jorvik' and journey through the reconstruction of Viking-Age streets as they would have been in the year 975AD.
