3,000 year old hoard wins new national award for Wealden community archaeology project
By John Smythe
A community archaeology project in the Weald has won a national award for their work in locating the likely find spot of a nineteenth century Bronze Age hoard. The collaborative venture between the Marden History Group & Heritage Centre, and the writer, was given the award at the national conference of the Community Archives & Heritage Group (CAHG) last month. Marden History Group was also named ‘Community Archive of the Year’ - the first time these accolades have been awarded by CAHG.
Eunice Doswell, from Marden, describes the three year project as “a story of community detective work to solve a Victorian mystery”.
The mystery is in the published account of the discovery of the hoard – Late Bronze Age weapons, tools, ornaments and metal working debris found buried in an urn in 1858. The Rev. Beale Poste gives surprisingly precise details about where they were found, but neither the name of the farm nor the meeting point of the two rivers that he mentions make much sense. Those who later compiled the official record of the find were also confused by Poste’s geography. Could we do better and pin down the ‘crime’ scene?
It didn’t quite work out as we’d imagined – more Columbo than Poirot or Miss Marple perhaps. Locating the farmer and the key witness was relatively straightforward as both were prominent landowners. Linking the farmer, Joseph Moren, to a plot of land called ‘Haye’ or ‘Hayeden’ that was close enough to two rivers was much more challenging though, even with the substantial local records that the Heritage Centre has collected. Subsequently, finding a transaction that included that land took nearly two years.
We did uncover a land deal involving the witness, Robert Golding, from neighbouring Hunton. He’d exchanged some fields in Marden at almost the exact time the hoard had been recovered; his presence near the scene suggested he was a very credible witness.
In the meantime we explored the discovery and hoard in more detail. The finds had ignited a lively debate about their dating within the British Archaeological Association. Poste claimed they were Roman while the Secretary of the Association, Syer Cuming, vehemently disagreed and sent samples of the surviving pot to Thomas Bateman, a leading expert of the day. From Cuming’s archived letters and published notes we were able to reconstruct the detail and flavour of what happened.
The hoard has never been fully published; nor has it been seen by the public since at least the 1960’s, so we examined and photographed it in Maidstone Museum’s basement. It contains items that Poste didn’t illustrate or mention including most notably, part of a flesh hook; the probable handle of a mirror, and a worked flint. The photos were put on a CD by our photographer, Ian Newton, as a virtual display of the hoard.
The project also experimented with field-walking and geophysical surveying; searched aerial photographs, and even did some metal detecting, but it was the documentary research that eventually seems to have come up trumps.
An inspired hunch led Trevor Simmons to track down the crucial paperwork in the archives of a major estate in the county, enabling us to narrow down