You may have seen coverage this week about the coin hoard discovered in Reynard’s Kitchen Cave in Dovedale. At one point it was the 2nd most popular story on the BBC News website!
The hoard consists of 26 coins, mostly Late Iron Age but including three Roman coins which pre-date the invasion of Britain in AD 43. It is believed to be the first time coins of these two origins are thought to have been found buried together in a cave in Britain. It is also unusual to find Late Iron Age gold coins. A Roman brooch was found alongside.
The find was particularly exciting for us at Buxton Museum because we already have the objects and animal bones that were found during the 1959 excavation by the City of Stoke Archaeological Society at the site. This excavation only covered a small area of the cave so it’s quite possible that they just missed out on discovering the coins.
We don’t have a lot of Iron Age material in our collections and even less on display, so we are very pleased that the National Trust are generously loaning the coins and brooch to Buxton Museum and Art Gallery for long term display.
We plan to put the items on show from October 2014 in one of our existing high-security cases. We’re continuing to work on plans to make the collections more accessible, including redeveloping our Wonders of the Peak gallery, and we intend to include the hoard within the new permanent displays. It will also be an opportunity to show material from the recent fieldwork at the Iron Age hillfort Fin Cop, which has been deposited at the museum.
Time to become an expert in Iron Age Derbyshire!
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery 
How wonderful! I do have a soft spot for Iron Age coinage. Would you consider doing a post on the tribes/images on the coins? That would be v. interesting.
LikeLike
Hi fosterlots, we will definitely be doing more posts on the coins once we’ve had a chance to find out all about them ourselves, and, in fact see them in the flesh at the museum! The images are a line we want to explore – how Iron Age people expressed and represented themselves through this form of art.
LikeLike