The Hidden Treasures of Kent

This special exhibition, within the Bentlif Gallery at Maidstone Museum, opened to the public on 12th May and has already been visited by substantial numbers of people. The exhibition has been funded by the Society, with the help of a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and major 'contribution in kind' from the Museum staff and Maidstone Council.

The 'Hidden Treasures' on display are finds from archaeological investigations in Kent, over more than 200 years. For the most part, they are finds which have not been on display within the county – indeed, they have not been on display anywhere, since the time that they were found.

Included in the display are a collection of flint tools from Swanscombe, probably made as much as 400,000 years ago and loaned to the Exhibition from museums in Manchester and Leeds. In the same case are other flint tools from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. From the Bronze Age come two collections of tools and weapons, both found at coastal settlement sites which are now only accessible at low tide. One of these is the 'Beck Hoard', in the British Museum since 1953. This has a most poignant story behind it, having been found by the 14-year old James Beck in 1938, only a short while before he was taken ill and died.

A display of Iron Age materials from Bigbury Hillfort, in Manchester since the 1890's, includes a unique six-man slave chain. Jewellery and other pieces from the Anglo Saxon period. On show for the first time is the well-preserved 'Coptic' bowl discovered during work on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Also for the first time, is displayed a collection of Anglo-Saxon brooches – no fewer than 47 of them. They were all made in Kent and show the development of the particularly Kentish style of such jewellery over a period of perhaps 300 years.

At the heart of the collection are the brooches found by Bryan Faussett in the mid 1700's and stored in Liverpool Museum since 1853. None of them has been back to Kent since then. These Liverpool pieces are supplemented by others from Leeds, Saffron Waldron, The Ashmolean in Oxford, the British Museum and some more local collections.

The Exhibition runs until the 9th September this year.