Mr John Ellery, coroner for North Shropshire, today (3-8-2010) found that this single silver penny of Henry III (see link below) was part of the much larger Baschurch hoard. As such Mr Ellery declared that this was Treasure in accordance with the Treasure Act 1996. Shropshire County Museum Service has expressed an interest in this coin and as such it will be valued by the Treasure Valuation Committee (TVC). The TVCs valuation will then be offered as a reward to the finder and landowner.
A display of the Baschurch hoard is planned for the New Year at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery (Rowley’s House), after which it will form part of the redisplayed medieval gallery at the new museum (Music Hall) in Shrewsbury.
This new addition to the Baschurch hoard is a silver penny of Henry III, Class IIIb, struck by the moneyer, Nicole at the Shrewsbury Mint. 1248-1250 (North 987). Very little is known about the Shrewsbury mint. We do not know where it was based but it has been suggested that it was within the town castle complex. This would make sense as value of the bullion, coins and more importantly the dies for making the coins would have needed a lot of protection and security. A building known as The Old Mint (Bennet’s Hall) on Pride Hill, Shrewsbury is likely to refer to the site of the civil war mint rather than this much older example. The names of the moneyers are recorded as Richard (Ricard) Pride, Nicholas (Nicole), son of Ives, Laurence (Lorenz) Cox, and Peter (Peris) son of Clement. It is highly unlikely that these were actually the people who made the coins; they were more likely to be the foremen who were in charge and were responsible for a team of workmen.
As Dr Cook suggests in his report coins from Shrewsbury are relatively rare, they represent a very small fraction of all the coins of this period. For example, the PAS database has recorded only 3 complete Shrewsbury pennies and three further cut fractions. When this is compared to the long cross pennies of Henry III on the database (over 1500) this is a tiny proportion (0.4 %). There have been no discoveries of Shrewsbury based coins of this period from Shropshire, which makes this group even more interesting. In the major study of the Shrewsbury coins John Brand suggests that £7167 were struck at Shrewsbury by the four moneyers. This equals the equivalent of 1,720,080 pence, which is a phenomenal number of coins. The fact that very few survive and are found today would suggest that medieval recycling of currency was extremely effective and that the medieval people were especially careful with their silver money.
The original discovery of the Baschurch Hoard was made in 2007 by a metal detectorist. I wrote a short article on this for The Searcher which is attached to this blog as a PDF. My article is based in large part on the excellent Treasure report produced by Dr Barrie Cook of the British Museum.
Baschurch Coin Hoard, originally published in The Searcher
Follow link below for PAS record:
PAS record number: HESH-4AA683 Object type: Coin Broadperiod: MEDIEVAL County of discovery: Shropshire Stable url: http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/251501
See the link below for other coins of Henry III struck in Shrewsbury between 1248-1250 AD: https://finds.org.uk/database/search/results/objecttype/coin/broadperiod/Medieval/ruler/204/mint/194
and a link to the results mapped: https://finds.org.uk/database/search/map/objecttype/coin/broadperiod/Medieval/ruler/204/mint/194