Hoard declared Treasure by coroner

On 22 July, the hoard was declared to be Treasure at a coroner’s inquest in Frome. It will now be valued by the Treasure Valuation Committee at their meeting in October and the Committee has commissioned valuations from two of the leading trade experts in Roman coins.

A selection of coins from the hoard was put on show in Frome library on the 22nd and over 2,000 people came to see the coins and hear Sam Moorhead, Roger Bland, Anna Booth and Katie Hinds talk about them.

Roger says:

We were all amazed and greatly encouraged at the huge interest shown by the people of Frome in this hoard and hope to work with Somerset County Council Heritage Service on arranging more events like this in the county. At the moment we are only at the start of the project to study the hoard. Although all the coins have been washed and identified by emperor, many thousands are unidentified and it will be a year’s work for a conservator to clean all the coins. At present we trying to raise the funding for this. Once the valuation of the hoard has been agreed, Somerset County Council Heritage Service will need to raise the funding to acquire the hoard for Somerset. British Museum Press are publishing a small book on the hoard in order to help the fundraising campaign.

Sam said:

‘It is wonderful that a new discovery can generate so much interest. It shows that the public have a thirst to see and hear about major new finds. Furthermore, having over 2,000 people (including two groups of school children) come in person to look at the coins will have an enormous impact on the local community and its engagement with history. There is no doubt that Britain’s forgotten emperor, Carausius, is now beginning to enter the psyche of people who have been following the media reports on the hoard. The Portable Antiquities Scheme might have a major responsibility to record new finds by the public, but it also plays a crucial role in the wider dissemination of knowledge about the past. Has any coin hoard ever generated this much interest in the past? I don’t think so.’