CHESHIRE Viking hoard

TheHuxley Hoard

runearthedIn 2004, a unique hoard ofunusual Viking silver arm-ringswas found by a metal detectoristin a field near ehester. Whatdoes this discovery add to ourunderstanding of Scandinaviansettlement in north-westEngland? LisaWestcottexamines the evidence.

Picture a cold and wet NovemberSunday morning on the CheshirePlain, six miles south of ehester:the landscape is dominated bypasture and criss-crossed by hedgelines, stock-proof fencing and the

meandering course of the River Gowy. On thisparticular morning, in 2004, the grazing cattlehad been replaced by a host of metal detectorists,clad in water-proofs, making their systematicsweeps up and down the unpromising fields.

At about ll.OOam, Dan Garner, the SeniorArchaeologist for ehester City Council, receivedan excited phone call about ahoardofsilverbeingexcavated that very moment in Huxley. Dan's

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Sunday morning plans were suspended äs herushed over to investigate. One of the detectoristshad unearthed some large fragments of lead sheetabout a foot below turf level, rapidly followed bythe recovery of several large silver items. Furtherexcavation revealed about three dozen fragmentsof lead sheet and 22 pieces of silver, which wereclearly Viking artefacts.

The spectacular Huxley Hoard consists of l. 4kgof silver, comprising 20 flattened, band-shapedarm-rings, one ingot and one decorated braceletrod that had been deliberately twisted out ofshape. There are also 39 fragments of decayed leadsheet, presumably from a wrapping or Container.The Huxley Hoard is coinless and, given that thearm-rings had been reduced to an unwearablestate before burial, the value of the silver wouldhave been measured by weight - in other words,a bullion hoard. Most likely buried in the earlylOth Century, the Huxley Hoard has triggered areconsideration of the early years of the Scandi-navian settlement of north-west England (Cum-bria, Lancashire, and Cheshire) and the coastalareas of North Wales from Clywd to Anglesey.

LEFT Showing thelocations of the Huxleyand Cuerdale hoards.

Finding the hoard

When Dan Garner arrived at the metal detectingrally, he was met by the hoard's finder, Mr SReynoldson, heading in the opposite direction.Although rally organisers had asked Reynoldsonnot to remove anything until archaeologistsarrived on site, he had tired of waiting for Danand had decided to call it a day. However, heagreed to head back out with Dan to identify thefind-spot, which unfortunately had by now been

thoroughly trampled. After a bit of prospecting,Dan located the recently-excavated hole andremoved enough backfill to expose an undis-turbed section edge of Reynoldson's pit.

The entire profile from the turf to the base was0.4m; it seems likely the hoard was containedwithin a shallow cut at the top of the clay, thoughit had been disturbed several times by post-Medi-eval ploughing and had narrowly missed beingentirely dislodged and scattered. Once the preciselocation of the hoard had been verified, the onlything left to do under the circumstances was torecord the location äs accurately äs possible. Fol-lowing Dan Garner's involvement, the hoard ©

BELOW ANDFOLLOWING PAGES Thedeliberately flattenedsilver armbands,decorated with punchdesigns, and (No. 21)the twisted decoratedbracelet.

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CHESHIRE Viking hoard

was reported to Nick Herepath,at that time the Finds LiaisonOfficer for the North West,who then recorded the hoardand arranged for its transfer tothe British Museum.

The Huxley Hoard wasdeclared Treasure on 15 July2005 by the Coroner forehester, and subsequentlyvalued at £28,000. In 2006, theHeritage Lottery Fund fundedthe purchase of the hoard,and it is now jointly ownedby National Museums Liver-pool and Cheshire West andehester Museums.

ABOVE Distribution mapof Viking Age hoards andassemblages containingHiberno-Scandinavianbroad-band arm-ringsfrom Britain and Ireiand.

FUGHT Illustration of apiece of impressed goldfoil from Sorte Muld,Bornholm, Denmark,showing a man wieldinga sword and wearingarm-rings.

Unusual evidence

The Huxley Hoard was buried sometime aroundAD 900 in an isolated spot close to theRiver Gowy, which would probablyhave been accessible to the Irish SeaandnavigableviatheMerseyEstuary.Of the 22 objects recovered, 20 areband-shaped, penannular arm-ringsof Hiberno-Scandinavian type,decorated with punched designsand flattened in half. Arm-rings ofthe Hiberno-Scandinavian type formthe largest and most impressive groupof arm-rings known from Ireland's Viking Agesilver-working tradition, and represent the mostdistinctive form of arm-ring from Britain and Ire-iand during the period c.850-c.950.

The Huxley arm-rings are mostly complete,although four of them have had a small piececut off one end (numbers 4, 8, 9 and 13). Theflattened shape would have made the arm ringsmuch easier to pack into the lead Container -and thus, much easier to conceal and transport.In this form, they also would have been mucheasier to turn into 'hack silver' (cut-up fragmentsof jewellery and ingots, for use by weight) or tomelt down for re-casting.

The decorations show a ränge of designs,although a saltire design is populär, (a diagonalcross or star pattern) appearing in the centralpanel of numbers 1-12. There is one unfinishedring in the hoard (number 10) which looks likethe work of an apprentice, where the decorativestamping was clearly started in the central field(the saltire) and worked towards one end; how-ever, in this case, the stamping was so poorly exe-cuted that it was abandoned halfway throughthe Job. This ring was never meant to be worn -

clearly destined, from early on, to becomehack-silver.

Indeed, the fact that all the broad-bandarm-rings in the Huxley Hoard have been

flattened is very unusual. This specifictreatment does not occur anywhereeise in the hoard evidence fromBritain and Ireiand, though there isone close parallel in the Vale of York

hoard - where an annular arm-ringwas flattened without bending it in

half - and many hack-silver frag-ments of similar arm-rings were

found in the Cuerdale hoard. It ispossible that the Huxley arm-rings were never

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The Cuerdale HoardDiscovered on 15 May 1840 on the southern

bank of a bend of the River Ribble near

Preston, Lancashire, the Cuerdale hoard

contains over 8,600 items including silver

coins, English and Carolingian jewellery, hack

silver and ingots. It is larger in both number

of objects and weight than any hoard found

in Scandinavia, or any other western areas

settled by the Vikings.

The coins in the hoard are from three

sources, inciuding the Viking kingdoms of

eastern England, Alfred's Wessex and also

foreign sources, which include Byzantine,

Scandinavian, Islamic, Papal, North Italian

and Carolingian mints. It is believed the

hoard was buried between AD 903 and 910,

soon after the Vikings were expelled from

Dublin in 902.

RtGHT A selection of objects from theCuerdale Hoard.

manufactured into ring form, but were insteadbent in half from their flattened state. It seemsunlikely anyone would go to the trouble of flat-tening 20 fully-formed, finished arm-rings andthen bend them in half, when there were other,easier options; what would have been the point offlattening and bending them, if only to cut themup for hack-silver?

This question might partly be answered by thefactthatallbut one of the Huxley arm-bands lacks

evidence of nicking (test-marks to fest the qualityof the silver and ensure it was not plated), whichis an indication that they never entered into cir-culation äs currency rings, at least in a Scandina-vian culture. It seems likely, then, that they werenever finished into complete ring form, whichmeans that this group represents the product of asingle workshop rather than a gradual accumula-tion of wealth: perhaps the work of a couple of sil-versmiths and the apprentice - who earned his ©

CHESHIRE Viking hoard

The DanelawThe Danelaw is the historical name given to northern and eastern England from

approximately AD 800 to 954, where the laws of the 'Danes' dominated those of the

Anglo-Saxons.This included the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia, äs well äs

the Five Boroughs - of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Lincoln.

'Danelaw' is also used to describe the legal terms created in the treaties between

Alfred the Great and the Danish warlord, Guthrum, written following Guthrum's

defeat at the Battle of Ethandun in 878. In 886, theTreaty of Alfred and Guthrum

was formalised, defining the boundaries of their kingdoms, with provisions for

peaceful relations between the English and the Vikings.The prosperity of the

Danelaw, especially Eoforwic (Danish Jörvfk, modern York), led to its targeting by later

Viking raiders. Conflict with Wessex - under the leadership of Alfred's son Edward the

Eider - and Mercia, sapped the strength of the Danelaw, most dramatically in AD 910

atTettenhall, ultimately leading to its Submission in AD 917 in return for protection.

ABOVE Hoards and frontiers of the northern Danelaw: the geographical distributionof the hoards reveals many were located either on or very near important east-westroutes within the northern Danelaw. Here, Huxley clearly sits on the route betweenehester and York.

place in history äs the sole result of the botcheddecoration on arm-ring number 10.

The Huxley Hoard appears to have been buriedunder a lead cover or Container, so it seemslikely that it was concealed with the Intentionof recovery rather than permanently buried äsa ritual offering. Three other early lOth Centuryhoards have been found associated with leadenContainers: the Cuerdale Hoard, which was dis-covered with lead fragments; the Bossall/Flaxton,which was described äs having been in a leadenbox; and the recent hoard from the Vale of York(CA 212), which was either in a lead Container, orunder a sheet of lead.

Hoards of the Danelaw

The Huxley Hoard is an important find in agrowing body of material, and one of a numberof recent hoards from the Viking Age. Of these,the 2007 Vale of York Hoard (initially called theHarrogate Hoard) has attracted the most atten-tion äs the largest and most varied hoard of thiskind to have been found since the famous Cuer-dale Hoard, was discovered in 1840. Included inthis group are recent hoards from Flusco Pike inCumbria, Warton in Lancashire, and a hoardfrom North Yorkshire discovered in 2004. Thisgroup in turn forms part of the larger corpus of18 Viking hoards from the Northern Danelaw(present-day Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lin-colnshire and Yorkshire), which are tightly datedto the first decades of the lOth Century.

Huxley is unique among the northern hoardsäs the only substantial pure bullion hoard; thoughwith a total bullion weight of c. l. 4kg, it only rates äs

-j- ^Ä *-/3f.

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medium-sized. Very little is yet known about howor why the Huxley Hoard was gathered together,or about the social Status of the owner - althoughit is likely that he or she came lower down thesocial scale than the owners of the Vale of Yorkand Cuerdale hoards. The Huxley Hoard, how-ever, would still have beenveryvaluableindeedatthe time, equivalent to the annual yield of a smallestate äs recorded in the Domesday Book.

There are four main categories of objects in theViking hoards of the northern Danelaw: jewel-lery and Ornaments, bullion, imported coinage,and locally-produced coinage. Taken äs a group,these varied Contents contain clues about polit-ical and economic boundaries in northern Eng-land during the lOth Century, and raise questionsnot only about the uses of the items prior to theirburial, but also challenge pre-existing ideas aboutpower centres, communication routes and settle-ment patterns for this period. Larger hoards suchäs the Cuerdale and the Vale of York may havecombined items that were brought togetherin burial to preserve different forms of wealthagainst a perceived threat; or, moving beyondobvious economic reasons for burying wealth,may have fulfilled social functions such äs ritualofferings and conspicuous consumption.

Turbulent beginnings

But what of the world to which the objects inthe Huxley Hoard belonged? In order to beginto speculate about the possible reasons why thehoard was buried, it is necessary to look at the cir-cumstances of the time. The Scandinavian settle-ment of this region has long inspired scholarly

study, including the most recent investigationslinking the DNA of modern Wirral residents totheir forbears (CA 245); however, evidence is scantand the history must be pieced together throughinterdisciplinary research including archaeology,art history, place-name evidence and compari-sons with better-documented areas such äs NorthEast England, Ireland and Scotland north of theForth-Clyde line. The area rarely appears in textsfrom the Viking Age (though the Anglo-SaxonChronide, the main source of Information for thisperiod, does record the Viking raid on Lindisf arnein AD 793) and archaeological evidence has beenpatchy. It has long been accepted the Vikings set-tled in North West England af ter their expulsionfrom Dublin in AD 902, when much of the popu-lation dispersed to various places. The coastlineof the north-west would obviously have been anattractive destination, far from established cen-tres of political authority.

During the last decade of the 8th Century(traditionally accepted äs the beginning of theViking Age in Britain), North West England wasdivided between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms ofNorthumbria and Mercia. During the 860s, thesekingdoms were devastated by the Vikings, whosearmy gained control of York in 876 and thencarved up the former kingdom of Northumbria.In 874, Mercia suffered a similar fate. The later9th and early lOth centuries saw a steep rise inthe Strategie significance of the Dee and Merseybasin, which appears to have begun in AD 893-894 when a group of Danes, recently defeated byAlfred's forces at Buttington (Montgomeryshire)overwintered in what the Anglo-Saxon Chronidecalled 'a deserted city called ehester'. ©

Viking hoard

The early-to-mid lOth Centuryof the Nort West is characterisedby the power struggles of Edwardthe Eider ofWessex; the ambitionsof the Anglo-Saxon monarchswho were looking north towardsthe remnants of Northumbrian and British-ruledareas of Cumbria and northern Lancashire; andthe machinations of the Mercian and West Saxonrulers who were expanding their own power intothe vacuum left by the collapse of Northumbria.Clusters of Viking settlements sät uneasily on theouter margins, and there is no doubt that bandsof Vikings, some armed and some merely seekingto turn a profit, were moving around and settlingin the North West at this tirne.

Recent research has argued convincingly thata group of the Dublin exiles settled on the RiverRibble, and thus can be associated with the Cuer-dale Hoard, buried on its banks between AD 905-910. Much of that bullion came from Ireland,though it also contained freshly minted coins fromYork. What does this mean for the Huxley Hoard? Itis difficult to securely date coinless hoards; however,it is entirely possible that the cache of arm-rings inthe Huxley Hoard was part of the war ehest of theVikings who had been driven out of Dublin.

Was the Huxley hoard banked in the earth forretrieval or buried at a time of crisis? This may per-haps be answered by its suggested burial in theearly lOth Century, a period of great political andsocial upheaval in North West England. At thistime, the Ribble Valley was an important Vikingroute between the Irish Sea and York; an impor-tant detail, given that the hoards of ten seem to beplaced along communication routes - although it

Much of the bullion came fromIreland, though it also containedfreshly minted coins from York.

is possible that individual hoards(or groups of hoards) might repre-sent more localised accumulationof wealth and power. It is hard tosay which is the case with Huxley.What is certain is that, together

with ehester and Eccleston, Huxley forms aconcentrated group of hoards in the area in andaround ehester, at just the period when the bor-ough of ehester was developing its importance,having only a few years before been no more thana 'deserted Roman fort'. This could reflect Ches-ter's growing importance äs a power centre, withthe Huxley Hoard representing local rather thantransient wealth. Equally, it is possible that thehoard and development of ehester reflect theimportance of this area äs a gateway between theIrish Sea and the northern Danelaw.

At the core of these questions is the importanceof trade - not only in ehester, but elsewhere in theNorth West region during the Viking Age. Coinsand bullion provide central clues, äs do paral-lels with archaeological material to the west andnorth. As more is discovered, such äs the gravesat Cumwhitton (CA 204), the settlement site atLlanbedgroch in Wales, and the recent hoards,the picture of this region grows ever clearer, and amore coherent story of Viking settlement aroundthe rim of the Irish Sea emerges. Future researchis clearly on track to fill in the gaps of our knowl-edge of this fascinating and turbulent period. (a]

FURTHER INFORMATION

Reap and Tillage Exhibition Until 9 January 2011, Grosvenor

Museum, 27 Crosvenor Street, ehester, CH1 2DD Tel: 01244

402033, grosvenormuseum@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk

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