# The Staffordshire Hoard > Unknown Anglo-Saxon goldsmith or goldsmiths' workshop(s), Mercia and/or East Anglia - Individual objects span, on stylistic evidence, the later 6th century to the earlier 8th century AD; the hoard's burial is most often placed c. 650-675 AD, though this date is contested (see narrative) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/anglo-saxon-goldsmiths-staffordshire-hoard/staffordshire-hoard/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-13 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Anglo-Saxon goldsmith or goldsmiths' workshop(s), Mercia and/or East Anglia - **Date:** Individual objects span, on stylistic evidence, the later 6th century to the earlier 8th century AD; the hoard's burial is most often placed c. 650-675 AD, though this date is contested (see narrative) - **Medium:** Gold, silver and silver-gilt, with garnet cloisonne, gold filigree, niello and glass, mostly in the form of dismantled sword, helmet and other war-gear fittings - **Dimensions:** Approximately 4,600 individual pieces and fragments in aggregate; about 5.1 kg of gold and 1.4 kg of silver, with roughly 3,500 separate pieces of cloisonne garnet (individual piece measurements are given in Technical, where recorded in the sources consulted) - **Object type:** Arms and armour - **Period:** Anglo-Saxon England, Mercian kingdom, 7th century (with some heirloom pieces reaching back to the 6th century) - **Current location:** Jointly owned and displayed by Birmingham Museums Trust (Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery) and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, with selected pieces also shown at Tamworth Castle and Lichfield as partners in the 'Mercian Trail' presentation of the find - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary In July 2009 the metal detectorist Terry Herbert found the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever recovered, in a field near Hammerwich, Staffordshire, on land farmed by Fred Johnson. Unlike a grave find such as Sutton Hoo, there was no body, no ship, and, so far as excavation could establish, no burial pit at all: around 4,600 pieces, some 5.1 kg of gold and 1.4 kg of silver, had been dismantled from swords, at least one helmet and a handful of Christian objects, and left in the ground with no one ever returning for them.Valued at 3.285 million GBP by the Treasure Valuation Committee and bought for the nation in 2010 after a public campaign led by the Art Fund, the hoard is now jointly held by Birmingham Museums Trust and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent. A second find in the same field in 2012 added a further 81 Treasure-declared pieces. What the hoard is actually for remains disputed: battlefield loot, a votive offering, a war leader's bullion reserve and collected tribute have all been argued by named specialists, and none has settled the question. Even the burial date is not fixed beyond a commonly cited but contested window of about 650 to 675 AD.This record treats the hoard as the dispersed, still partly unresolved find that it is: not the Sutton Hoo helmet, a different object from a different county and a different kind of site, and not the Cheapside Hoard, a wholly unrelated Jacobean jewellers' cache. Every claim below is tied, where the sources allow, to a specific catalogued piece. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **Later 6th century AD-earlier 8th century AD** Unknown Anglo-Saxon warrior elite and Mercian, and possibly East Anglian, goldsmiths across at least two or three generations `[documented]` (manufacture and use, as heirloom war-gear and personal ornament) The individual objects survive and their manufacture is not in question; what is genuinely uncertain is the exact span this covers (stylistic dating places the oldest identified piece, a silver sword pommel, at c. 550 AD and the youngest at c. 630-660 AD) and by whom, since no maker's mark survives on any piece. - **c. 650-675 AD (most commonly cited; disputed, see narrative)-5 July 2009** No one; the dismantled objects lay buried, disturbed only by post-medieval and modern ploughing `[disputed]` (deposition and burial, followed by a gap of roughly 1,300 years) Both the exact date and the reason for burial are unresolved scholarly questions, not settled facts; see narrative for the battlefield-loot, votive, treasury and tribute theories, and for the palaeographic dating dispute between Michelle Brown and Elisabeth Okasha. The field was ploughed in autumn 2008, which scattered the objects through the topsoil ahead of discovery. - **5-10 July 2009-September 2009** Discovered by metal detectorist Terry Herbert on land owned by farmer Fred Johnson; reported to Duncan Slarke, Portable Antiquities Scheme Finds Liaison Officer for Staffordshire `[documented]` (discovery and initial recovery) Herbert had a prior written agreement with Johnson to split any reward equally. He recovered around 500 items over five days before reporting the find; a 1 x 1 m test pit dug by Stephen Dean of Staffordshire County Council and Ian Wykes recovered a further roughly 100 items, after which Birmingham Archaeology was commissioned to excavate the site systematically, recovering around 800 more objects by hand across 152 sq m. - **September 2009-25 November 2009** Declared Treasure at a coroner's inquest; valued by the Treasure Valuation Committee `[documented]` (Treasure declaration and valuation) The Treasure Valuation Committee, chaired by Professor Norman Palmer, met at the British Museum on 25 November 2009 and valued the hoard at 3.285 million GBP under the Treasure Act 1996. Both museums seeking to acquire it, and both Herbert and Johnson, accepted the figure. - **13 January 2010-2010** Public fundraising campaign led by the Art Fund `[documented]` (acquisition campaign) The Art Fund launched a public appeal on 13 January 2010 with an initial GBP 300,000 grant, assisted by the Wolfson Foundation, and pledges of GBP 100,000 each from Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent City Councils. The National Heritage Memorial Fund contributed GBP 1.285 million and the public gave a further GBP 900,000, including GBP 640,000 raised through the Art Fund's own members and supporters, reaching the full GBP 3.285 million several weeks ahead of the campaign's own deadline. - **2010-present** Jointly acquired by Birmingham Museums Trust and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, on behalf of the nation `[documented]` (acquisition and joint ownership) Terry Herbert and Fred Johnson each received half of the 3.285 million GBP valuation under the Treasure Act 1996's finder and landowner reward provisions. The two museums have since displayed the hoard jointly, with further pieces shared with Tamworth Castle and Lichfield as partners in a 'Mercian Trail' presenting different aspects of the find. - **November 2012-January 2013** A further 91 pieces recovered from the same field by Archaeology Warwickshire and metal detectorists after renewed ploughing `[documented]` (second excavation and Treasure inquest) 81 of the 91 objects were declared Treasure at a coroner's inquest in January 2013, including a further large gold cross fragment and a second helmet cheek-piece; the remaining 10 were classed as non-Treasure wastage. These were added to the joint Birmingham/Stoke collection, bringing the assemblage to its current total of almost 4,600 pieces. ## Open questions - Why was the hoard buried at all: as battlefield loot, a votive or ritual deposit, a war leader's bullion reserve for paying followers, or collected tribute? The excavators and later researchers have proposed all four readings and none has been established over the others. - Was the hoard deposited in a single event, or added to on separate occasions over years or decades? The wide stylistic date-range of the objects, from a c. 550 AD heirloom pommel to c. 630-660 AD new work, is consistent with either answer, and no datable archaeological feature survived the site's ploughing history to settle it from the ground itself. - When exactly was it buried? The commonly cited window of c. 650-675 AD rests on stylistic dating of the objects and an assumed link to Penda's Mercia; the inscribed gold strip's lettering has been dated as early as the 7th century by Michelle Brown and as late as the 8th or 9th century by Elisabeth Okasha from the same physical evidence, and other researchers have argued for a considerably later deposition, during renewed Mercian conflict around 716 or the Offa-Beornred civil war of 757. - Do all the helmet fragments belong to one helmet? The attribution of roughly a third of the hoard's mass to a single dismantled helmet rests on comparison and pattern-matching across many small, damaged pieces rather than on any surviving overall shape, and Tom Shippey's review of the full academic publication notes it is not impossible that some fragments belong to a second helmet. - What was the unique cloisonne-and-millefiori-glass mount, catalogue no. 541 and nicknamed 'the mystery object' by researchers, actually for? A tentative link to ecclesiastical headwear has been proposed but, so far as the sources consulted show, not confirmed. - Did the findspot itself carry symbolic meaning, or was it chosen only because it was easy to find again? The excavators recorded both readings as live possibilities and found no archaeological evidence, such as a shrine or barrow, to decide between them. - Where was the gold itself sourced? A link to recycled or debased mid-7th-century gold coinage has been proposed to explain the silvery tinge of some pieces, but the sources consulted do not report a scientific sourcing study establishing where the raw bullion actually came from, unlike the study that has traced Sutton Hoo's garnets to Sri Lanka and India. ## Sources - [1] Dean, S., Hooke, D. and Jones, A., 2010. 'The Staffordshire Hoard: The Fieldwork.' The Antiquaries Journal, 90, pp. 139-152. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Staffordshire Hoard'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Fern, C., Dickinson, T. and Webster, L. (eds), The Staffordshire Hoard: An Anglo-Saxon Treasure, Society of Antiquaries of London Research Report 80 (2019), which could not be directly accessed in full text during this research session. - [3] Birmingham Museums Trust, 'The discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard'. - [4] Tom Shippey, 'In an Unmarked Field: The Staffordshire Hoard', London Review of Books, vol. 42 no. 5, review of Fern, Dickinson and Webster (eds), The Staffordshire Hoard: An Anglo-Saxon Treasure (2019). - [5] Current Archaeology, 'Rethinking the Staffordshire Hoard: Piecing together the wealth of Anglo-Saxon kings'. - [6] Ann-Marie Carey, 'Recreating the Staffordshire Hoard Helmet: A Collaboration of Digital and Fine Metals Skills', The Alchemist, issue 117, London Bullion Market Association. - [7] Medievalists.net, 'Staffordshire Hoard helmet reconstructions revealed', November 2018. - [8] Historic England (Heritage Calling blog), 'What Does the Staffordshire Hoard Tell Us?', 20 January 2023. - [9] Chris Fern and Jenni Butterworth, 'The Staffordshire Hoard in ten objects', Liverpool University Press Blog, 4 May 2022. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Staffordshire helmet'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the 2019 Society of Antiquaries monograph and the Historic England helmet research reports. - [11] Fern, C., Dickinson, T. and Webster, L. (eds), The Staffordshire Hoard: An Anglo-Saxon Treasure, Society of Antiquaries of London Research Report 80 (2019). Cited via its review notice and via secondary reporting (sources 4, 5, 8, 9, 14, 16); the full monograph could not be directly accessed during this research session (multiple hosting sites returned HTTP 403 or connection errors to automated fetch). - [12] Art Fund, 'Staffordshire hoard'. - [13] SOFII, 'The Art Fund: the battle to save the Staffordshire Hoard' (fundraising case study). - [14] Current Archaeology, 'Staffordshire Hoard: trophies of warrior kings'. - [15] BabelStone Blog, 'The Staffordshire Hoard: Anglo-Saxon Epigraphy and the Manuscript Tradition', December 2009. - [16] Current Archaeology, 'Secrets of the Staffordshire Hoard: skills of the Saxon smiths revealed' (Dr Eleanor Blakelock's depletion-gilding analysis). - [17] BBC News, 'Staffordshire Hoard inquest rules most new items treasure', January 2013. - [18] Express & Star, 'Golden times ahead for Staffordshire Hoard millionaire'; and Medievalists.net, 'How the Staffordshire Hoard was Discovered' (Terry Herbert biographical detail and the finder/landowner reward split). - [19] Detecting.org.uk, 'The Staffordshire Hoard, the Anglo-Saxon find of the century!' (cited only for the claim of a lasting rift between the finder and the landowner; not corroborated elsewhere in the sources consulted). - [20] Wikimedia Commons file records and extmetadata (Portable Antiquities Scheme photography by Kevin Leahy and Daniel Pett; Flickr photography by Jon Callas and David Rowan), consulted individually per file for licence verification via the Commons API. - [21] Museums + Heritage Advisor, case study on the Staffordshire Hoard gallery at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, describing the 'Mercian Trail' partner-museum arrangement (Birmingham, the Potteries Museum, Tamworth Castle and Lichfield). - [22] Museum Crush, 'Anglo-Saxon treasures from the Staffordshire Hoard head to Sutton Hoo' (on the 2022 exhibition 'Swords of Kingdoms: The Staffordshire Hoard at Sutton Hoo'). - [23] Howard Williams (Archaeodeath blog), 'The Staffordshire Hoard redisplayed and revisited in 2023', 20 July 2023, on the Potteries Museum's 2023 gallery redisplay. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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