# The Great Dish from the Mildenhall Treasure > Unknown Late Roman silversmith's workshop - 4th century CE (300s AD) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/mildenhall-workshop/mildenhall-great-dish/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-29 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Late Roman silversmith's workshop - **Date:** 4th century CE (300s AD) - **Medium:** Silver, decoration worked in low relief and engraved line, parcel gilding on some raised elements - **Dimensions:** 605 mm diameter; weight 8.256 kg - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Late Roman Britain, 4th century CE - **Current location:** British Museum, London - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary The largest and most heavily decorated piece in the Mildenhall Treasure, a hoard of thirty-four Roman silver vessels struck by a ploughman's blade in a Suffolk field in January 1942. A mask of Oceanus stares from the centre of the dish, ringed by sea nymphs and, in the widest band, a full Bacchic procession complete with musicians. The dish was kept as undeclared household silver for over four years, at times doing duty as a fruit bowl, before being reported to the British Museum in 1946 and declared treasure trove.The documented record, drawn from the coroner's inquest and from British Museum correspondence, corrects a persistent popular myth: the reward was split equally between the finder, Gordon Butcher, and his employer, Sydney Ford, at 1,000 pounds each, not unevenly as is often repeated. Roald Dahl's famous fictionalised account of the discovery, published in America in 1947 and later reworked into a well-known illustrated book, took real liberties with both men's characters; Dahl said so himself, and this record treats his version as reception history, not as a source for what actually happened.Where the dish was made, exactly when its owner buried it, and why, remain open. The British Museum commits only to 'the general Mediterranean region' for its manufacture; the usual reading that it was hidden amid the instability of the end of Roman Britain is an argued interpretation, not a fact fixed by any evidence recovered with the hoard itself. The precise spot where Butcher's plough struck it has never been found again. ## 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. - **4th century CE-c. 380-430 CE (estimated)** Unknown Roman owner in Britain `[documented]` (manufacture, dated by style and hoard context) The dish's fourth-century date is the scholarly consensus, based on style and on the presence of a post-313 chi-rho monogram elsewhere in the hoard. - **4th century CE-c. 380-430 CE (estimated)** Unknown Roman owner in Britain `[unknown]` (ownership and use in Roman Britain) The identity of the owner and the exact date of burial are not documented; a general burial-date range in the late fourth to early fifth century has been argued by comparison with other late Roman silver hoards, not fixed by evidence found with the Mildenhall hoard itself. - **c. 380-430 CE-January 1942** No owner; buried in the ground `[unknown]` (gap) Approximately fifteen centuries with no documented custody. The reason for burial (commonly read as safekeeping amid the instability of the end of Roman rule in Britain) is an argued interpretation, not a documented fact; no destruction layer, coin or inscription at the findspot confirms a specific triggering event. - **January 1942-21 June 1946** Gordon Butcher (finder) and Sydney Ford (employer, of Grove Villa, West Row, Mildenhall) `[documented]` (discovery and undeclared possession) Struck by Gordon Butcher's plough at a depth of about 254 mm (10 inches) in a field under the tenancy of Fred Rolfe (Ordnance Survey plot 1673, landowner Mrs Sophie Aves), while Butcher was working for Sydney Ford. The two men dug the hoard out together and took it to Ford's house. Ford kept it undeclared for over four years, cleaning it over a period he described as nearly two years, and eventually displayed pieces including the Great Dish openly on his sideboard. - **21 June 1946-1 July 1946** Crown, pending inquest `[documented]` (reporting and seizure) Reported to Mildenhall police on 21 June 1946 after Sydney Ford was persuaded by the antiquarian Dr Hugh Fawcett; seized by police the same day; examined by British Museum staff (Kendrick, Hawkes, Plenderleith) ahead of a coroner's inquest. - **1 July 1946-19 July 1946** Crown `[documented]` (treasure trove inquest and verdict) Declared treasure trove by a twelve-man coroner's jury at Mildenhall police station, chaired by Robert Pizzey. A reward of 2,000 pounds was set, split equally between Sydney Ford and Gordon Butcher at 1,000 pounds each, paid via their solicitor on 16 August 1946 - the documented figure, correcting the popular but unsupported claim of a grossly unequal split. - **19 July 1946-present** British Museum, London `[documented]` (acquisition and display) Delivered to the British Museum under armed guard on 19 July 1946 and placed on public display the following day in the Edward VII gallery. Registration number 1946,1007.1. Displayed within the Museum's Roman Britain and late antique collections since; specific gallery location has changed over successive rehangs and should be confirmed against the Museum's current floor plan rather than this record. ## Open questions - Where exactly was the hoard buried? Despite repeated organised excavation by Lethbridge and Fowler in 1946-47, using locations Sydney Ford himself pointed to on at least three separate occasions, no disturbed ground or burial pit was ever found. The precise findspot remains unlocated. - In what year was the hoard actually buried by its Roman owner? No coin or dated inscription fixes this. The commonly cited range of roughly 380 to 420-430 CE rests on stylistic comparison with other late Roman hoards, not on independent dating evidence from Mildenhall itself. - Where was the Great Dish manufactured? The British Museum has not committed beyond 'the general Mediterranean region'. Eastern Mediterranean and Gallic origins have both been argued for pieces in the hoard, but neither is established for the dish itself. - Who owned it? The Lupicinus theory rests on an inscription found on different pieces in the same hoard, not on the Great Dish, and its proposer treated it as unproved. No documented owner exists for this specific object. - Was any part of the hoard ever recovered from the ground beyond the thirty-four registered pieces? Gordon Fowler and others suspected an incomplete find at the time; the coroner's own inquest summary contains an apparent transcription oddity ('one large pented hanging bowl') that has never been fully resolved against the surviving object. - Did Roald Dahl's fictionalised account ever receive a television adaptation, as is sometimes claimed? No BBC or other broadcast dramatisation was located in the sources consulted for this record; if one exists, it should be added with a citation. ## Sources - [1] British Museum collection online, object 1946,1007.1, 'dish' (the Great Dish from the Mildenhall Treasure). Registration number, dimensions (605 mm diameter, 8256 g), culture (Romano-British), date (300-399 CE) and description confirmed via the Museum's own data as mirrored on its Google Arts and Culture partner page. Direct access to britishmuseum.org/collection returned an HTTP 403 error during research for this record and should be re-verified against the live page. - [2] British Museum, object description text for the Great Dish (iconography of Oceanus and the Bacchic frieze, low relief and engraved line technique, and the statement on manufacture location), as reproduced via web search of britishmuseum.org content. - [3] Richard Hobbs, 'The Secret History of the Mildenhall Treasure', The Antiquaries Journal, vol. 88 (2008), pp. 376-420. The primary source for this record's account of the discovery, the four-year concealment, the 1946 inquest testimony, the reward correspondence and figures, the failed searches for the findspot, the conspiracy theories, and Roald Dahl's 1977 letter on the accuracy of his story. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Mildenhall Treasure', consolidating the hoard composition, registration number range, and bibliography. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with direct citation of the British Museum catalogue and Painter/Hobbs monographs where a claim rests on it alone. - [5] Wikipedia, 'The Mildenhall Treasure', on Roald Dahl's 1947 Saturday Evening Post article 'He Plowed Up $1,000,000' and its later book publications. Tertiary source. - [6] Mildenhall Museum, 'The Mildenhall Treasure' collections page, for local landscape context including the Icknield Way, Peddars Way, and the Beck Row timber structure, and for the Lupicinus ownership theory summary. - [7] Roald Dahl Fans, 'The Mildenhall Treasure', on the story's publication history across the Saturday Evening Post (1947), The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977), and the standalone illustrated edition (Jonathan Cape, 1999, illustrated by Ralph Steadman). - [8] Richard Hobbs, 'The Mildenhall Treasure: Roald Dahl's ultimate tale of the unexpected?', Antiquity, vol. 71, no. 271 (March 1997), pp. 63-73. Cited via its abstract and via its summary in source 3; the scholarly examination of Dahl's account against the documentary record. Flagged for direct consultation of the full article. - [9] Web search synthesis of scholarship proposing eastern Mediterranean or Gallic manufacture for pieces in the Mildenhall Treasure. Cited cautiously and graded as an argued position, not a documented fact, and flagged for direct verification against Kenneth Painter's 1977 catalogue and Richard Hobbs's 2016 British Museum Research Publication 200, neither of which could be fetched in full text during this research pass. - [10] Seuso Treasure Museum (Hungarian National Museum), 'The Mildenhall Treasure', comparative overview citing the stylistic similarity between the Mildenhall Great Dish's Bacchic frieze and the Dionysus ewer of the Seuso Treasure, and giving an estimated burial-date range of c. 380 to 420-430 CE. - [11] Wikimedia Commons file description, 'Flanged bowl and cover, made in Gaul, Mildenhall, 200s AD, silver and niello - British Museum - DSC01393.jpg', for the separate Gaulish attribution of a different piece in the same hoard. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. 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