It has to be the 'Lichfield Hoard'.

         When a metal detector found gold around 11am on 5 July 2009 in a field on the edge of the parish of Hammerwich it started an unresolved argument on where had it come from, whose hoard it was and who should look after it.

An intense thunderstorm and a passing van with Viking Office Supplies written on the side was portentous, or so some initially thought! The finder and land owner could not agree who benefitted. There were difficulties on who should look after the hoard, was it Stafford or Stoke? It has been written “the genuine need for secrecy and security, to protect the site from looting, was extended to absurdity by excluding proper consultation. Even the later period of fieldwork in March 2010 was carried out without wider consultation”.[1] It even needed a third visit to the field in 2012 to make sure everything had been found and it had not.[2] Many wanted to interpret the hoard and rush into print before it was completely analysed. How pundits were allowed to conclude the date of burial must have been the latest date of fabrication of certain pieces was an embarrassment. Displays with a huge reconstructed helmet suitable for a Roman centurion and emphasising warriors forever fighting have warped the history.

 

Field in the parish of Hammerwich. Taken around 2000. Note the unexplained crop mark

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                                             The dig in 2009. Thanks to Erica Bayliss for three images.

Even giving it a name was unfortunate. Traditionally hoards are named after the site where it was found and the magazine editorial in British Archaeology (Nov/Dec issue 109, 2009) proposed ‘Hammerwich Hoard’. 

Hammerwich Parish sign. Note the strange Staffordshire logo.

 Then several articles thought the site was in an ancient area known as Ogley Hay and this name was proposed.[3] Ogley has only been known since the Domesday Survey and could not have been part of the earlier settlement of Hammerwich.[4] A letter to British Archaeology (May/June issue 130, 2013) by the author pointed to the inappropriate Ogley Hay name. It was followed by the equally obscure designation of The Staffordshire Hoard. Ownership had now acceded to the museums and their great need to display the only gold Anglo-Saxon hoard that is without coins. It was frequently said we had not seen anything like this before.[5] Its problematical handling has perhaps not been seen before.

            Without an accurate name came all kinds of conjecture as to why the hoard was buried in a comparatively nondescript place. That is, within the plough level of soil on a rise of marginal land within a boggy heath and alongside an old Roman road (Watling Street) that had become an Anglo-Saxon pathway. Also close to a pathway west from Lichfield that eventually reached Wales and a stream that eventually joined the river Tame.

Map of area before development of A5 and M6 (Toll).

    The theories for the hoard sadly showed how easy writers conjured the most elaborate opinions. Claiming ‘that no one will ever know for sure’ and then detailing an elaborate plot weaved into some historical context is disingenuous. The following have been floated:

1.  It was King Penda’s incalculable treasure obtained from the Northumbrians, 655.[6] A tribute hoard.[7]
2. A leftover from a raiding army that had to leave in a hurry. For example, the Welsh attacking Mercia or even Northumbrians.[8] An angst hoard.
3. An assemblage of unwanted items destined for melting and recycling which never reached the forge.[9] A smith’s hoard.
4. A leftover from a Viking raid on a Royal Hall.[10] A plunderer’s booty hoard.
5.  A collection amassed by thieves and left as a deposit in a pagan sanctuary.[11] Bullion becoming a stash.
6. A votive offering comparable to Scandinavian deposits of broken military gear left in lakes or buried in defined areas.[12] A sacrificial hoard.

In defence of these wild theories, it needs stating they are based on behaviours thought to have occurred with other hoards and deposits; they are not isolated ideas, but that does not make them relevant. Surely, no two hoards have ever been buried for the same reason.

 The astonishing fact concerning all these suppositions is the nearness of Lichfield (Licetfelda) and an early cathedral-church initiated by King Wulfhere, developed by King Æthelred and adorned by King Offa which was never mentioned. Lichfield was air-brushed out of the story.[13] When the kings were mentioned they were on manoeuvres, never at home or in their ecclesiastical centre. Somehow Sutton Hoo cemetery can be 4.4 miles from Rendlesham’s royal enclosure (50 hectares containing a hall 23 x 10 m), but no one accounts for the Hammerwich find spot being 4.4 miles from Lichfield and an eccesiastical centre on a large site surrounded by a ditch.

Sutton Hoo site with the mound where the ship burial was found in the middle. Its archaeology suffered from predispositions that needed later correction. Its helmet is the best reconstruction, but not to be taken as certainty.

     Even more astonishing is the interest shown in linking the hoard with manufactories in East Anglia, Kent and Northumbria without ever seriously considering craftsmen could be living or visiting inner Mercia. Appraisal of the hoard has been eccentric, saying more about the writer and where they came from or how the hoard impacts on their specialism. Ignored or glossed-over pointers for the hoard originating from Lichfield are:

1. The Mercian hegemony, kingly power, military prowess, priestly importance, and the people settled around a significant river could have amassed such treasure. Mercians, particularly under Penda, were better organised than other sub-kingdoms.
2. The collection of pommel caps and sword hilt fixtures over a long time, 520–670, connected perfectly with the early Mercian kingly dynasties.
3.  The Easter Cross and Bishop’s handbell can be linked to a growing Roman church and Bishop Wilfrid. The Easter Cross would fit onto the cover of an altar display book such as St Chad’s gospels. The pectoral cross must have belonged to a bishop. There are pieces that could have belonged to an ecclesiastical elite, such as Mercian earls (eorl). The fanciful idea of Christian pieces came from priests fighting in an army belongs to a sixth-century history. Warriors and priests in the seventh-century kept a respectful distance, except for at the time of festivals like Easter and Christmas when scribes helped warriors write their charters.
4. A lack of blades is easily explained by weaponry being an archive kept in a church.[14] The abundance of sword hilt pieces (97 pommel caps) might just be because the sword is also a cross and the hilt is the head. Did the swords have a spiritual significance? Read Beowulf.[15]
5. Majority of items were bent, broken or misshapen, but not degraded beyond repair. They did not show destruction caused by conflict. It was as if they were removed from use and placed in storage, perhaps ready for repair. As if they belonged to an archive of past treasured objects. There were also sets of pieces and again looked as if treasure from a particular time and place.
6. A lack of horse decoration, coins, protective gear and dress fittings would be appropriate for a church archive and not associated with a royal hall or battle. Female pieces are missing and again this would fit with a church and not a royal household.
7. The inscribed strip with its angst message could be connected to a raid on the cathedral by the Danish Northmen in early 875.[16]^,[17]
8.  Burial could have been at the beginning of an exodus into Wales and linked with the removal of the St Chad’s gospels to north Carmarthenshire.

Drawing of the inscribed strip with its message of woe. A date of 8th or 9th-century has been given.

 

It is time for the elaborate conjectures based on events elsewhere need to be buried and a prosaic, topographical interpretation considered centred on Lichfield. The Staffordshire Hoard is emblematic to all that was happening in the ecclesiastical centre of Mercia.

[1] See Webster et al (2011).

[2] 91 further pieces were found of which 81 were declared treasure.

[3] L. Webster, C. Sparey-Green, P. Perin and C. Hills, ‘The Staffordshire (Ogley Hay) hoard: problems of interpretation’. Antiquity, (2011), 85, Issue 327, 221–229.

[4]  The hoard find spot lay within the extra-parochial area of Ogley Hay, now part of the parish of Hammerwich, according to D. Hooke, ‘The Landscape of the Staffordshire Hoard’, in Papers from the Staffordshire Hoard Symposium, H. Geake (ed.), 2010. See https://finds.org.uk/staffshoardsymposium

[5] Surely Sutton Hoo and the Snettisham treasure (and arguably others) are just as significant.

[6] Burying by the road from Wroxeter and Chester and not the north road to Northumbria needs explaining.

[7] See the post ‘King Penda needs a statue.’

[8] Why a fighting unit of men should then decide to bury their booty is counter-intuitive.

[9] Why a smith’s forge should be close to a boggy waste land requires explanation. The hammer in Hammerwich cannot be cited.

[10] There is no evidence the Vikings went west of Watling Street in this area of Mercia.

[11] Why would thieves want to bury their bullion? Especially in a place where robbers could have worked.

[12] Depositing a cross as a votive offering is unheard of and Scandinavians doing so in England is unknown. It resonates with the site possibly being an Anglo-Saxon weoh.

[13] A display of some of the hoard in the cathedral is not the same as emphasising its significance.

[14] The argument that the hammer welded blades are more valuable than the hilts avoided the question ‘why were the blades not present in a booty or bullion hoard’?

[15] The subliminal suggestion is numerous swords and seax pieces showed the Anglo-Saxons were forever fighting. Barbarians who must have lived before Christianity arrived has now become new folklore.

[16] R. Sharp, The hoard and its history. Staffordshire’s secrets revealed. (Studley: 2016), 76–7.

[17] See the post ‘Vikings and Lichfield.’