Category: Summer Series

“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.

Dr. Annaleigh Margey Early maps of Derry around the year 1600 capture a pivotal military transition, shifting from an ancient monastic settlement into an English garrison, and eventually the first planned city in Ireland. [1, 2, 3, 4] The primary historical maps from this era fall into a few key collections:

The Leo Swan Memorial Lecture Frederick Hervey, Earl Bishop of Derry Dr Rebecca Campion Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, PC (Ire), FRS (1 August 1730 – 8 July 1803), was an 18th-century Anglican prelate. Elected Bishop of Cloyne in 1767 and translated to the see of Derry in 1768, Hervey served as Bishop of Derry until his death in 1803. He is remembered for designing mansions at Downhill and Ballyscullion, and he was known as the Edifying Bishop or the Earl-Bishop (in allusion to prince-bishop).

Donegal and the Annals of the Four Masters Dr. Bernadette Cunningham The Annals of the Four Masters is the most comprehensive chronicle of Irish history, chronicling events from the biblical great flood to 1616 AD. Compiled between 1632 and 1636, this masterpiece was directed by Franciscan friar Mícheál Ó Cléirigh alongside three other hereditary historians.

Construction of the Base Line on Magilligan Strand for the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in the early 19th century Dr. Finnian Ó Cionnaigh The Magilligan baseline is a precise 41,640,9 foot (12,692 m) straight line measured in 1828 along the Magilligan strand and Ballykelly in Co London/Derry. Chosen for its flatness, it served as the foundational starting point for the first major Ordnance Survey of Ireland’s triangulation network. The measurement achieved extraordinary accuracy; when the line was remeasured using electronic equipment in 1960, the difference was roughly one inch (an error of 2 millionths of the total length)