“Fanciful suggestions more suited to the poem of a Celtic bard than the prose of an English Law report”
The Broighter Hoard as Treasure Trove

Aideen Ireland

Aideen Ireland is the retired Head of Reader Services Division of the National Archives of Ireland. She serves on the Council of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland of which she is a past President. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and has served on its Council. She is past President of the Archives and Records Association (UK & Ireland). She has recently acted as Chair of the Strategic Review Committee for the preparation of the Strategic Development Plan 2023–2027 for the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

*!*!* The lecture will be followed by wine and cake to celebrate 50 years since the Society was founded *!*!*

[from Wikipedia]

The Broighter Gold or more correctly, the Broighter Hoard, is a hoard of gold artefacts from the Iron Age of the 1st century BC that were found in 1896 by Tom Nicholl and James Morrow on farmland near Limavady, Northern Ireland.^[1] The hoard includes a 7-inch-long (18 cm) gold boat, a gold torc and bowl and some other jewellery.

The National Museum of Ireland, who now hold the hoard, describe the torc as the “finest example of Irish La Tène goldworking”.^[2] Replicas of the collection are kept at the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

A somewhat puzzling aspect of the hoard is that scientific analysis suggests the same source for the gold in all the pieces, but they show a great diversity in style, from Celtic to Roman.^[3]

A design from the hoard has been used as an image on the 1996 issue of the Northern Ireland British one-pound coins^[4] and the gold ship featured in a design on the last Irish commemorative one-pound coins.^[5] The Broighter Collar and Broighter Ship also featured on definitive postage stamps of Ireland from 1990 to 1995.