[Regia-NA] FW: Find in a French garden (one for our Normans + Dave the Money er)

[Nicholson, Andrew]

-----Original Message-----
From: Win Scutt 
Sent: 27 September 2004 19:25
To: BRITARCH at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: Find in a French garden


I've just found a detailed description of the find on
http://www.spink.com/news/current_news/4018b.asp
with photographs of some of the coins.
What an amazing find!
Below is a transcript of the first part of the website.
By the way, there's also a good piece on the Spink website aboutn the gold
penny of Coenwulf of Mercia, found in Bedfordshire
Win




News

Coinex: The Pimprez Hoard

This remarkable hoard, deposited c.1140, was discovered by chance in the
grounds of a house in the small town of Pimprez (Oise), near Beauvais, 50
kilometers north of Paris, in 2002. The hoard was properly declared to the
French authorities and was fortunately available intact for study by Bruno
Foucray, regional curator of Archaeology and by Christophe Vellet, curator
in the Cabinet des Medailles (Bibliotheque Nationale de France) with a view
to publication in a future issue of the Revue Belge de Numismatique.

The Pimprez hoard consists of 569 silver coins and 12 silver ingots,
comprising 446 English pennies, 374 of Henry I (1100-1135) and 72 of Stephen
(1135-1154) and 123 continental pennies and bracteates, mainly from the
mints of Metz, Liege, Maastricht, Treves and Zurich. There were no royal
French coins. The ingots are unusual in a hoard of this period. They vary in
weight from 9.95 to 223.26 grams and amount, in total, to rather over half
the bullion value of the hoard.

The English pennies are struck in excellent silver and show little sign of
wear from circulation, though many, particularly the crude coins of Henry I'
s last issue, type XV (1125-35), are of the typically poor workmanship of
the 12th Century. The earliest coin is a London mint cut halfpenny of Henry
I's excessively rare type VIII, struck around 1113, but the glory of the
hoard is the remarkable group of 24 pennies of Henry I's very rare type XI,
the famous and distinctive 'double inscription' issue, dating from around
1115. These are struck at a remarkable 16 different mints, and include seven
unique pieces, from six mints - Cambridge, Exeter, Lewes, Northampton, Rye
and Watchet - that were hitherto completely unknown for the issue.

The hoard continues with a fine group of type XIV pennies, including the
rare mints of Hastings, Hereford, Oxford and Shrewsbury, and a large run of
coins of type XV, many of London but including four important coins of the
English/Scottish border town of Carlisle of which only six examples were
previously known. The English element concludes with an attractive run of
pennies of king Stephen in unusually fine condition, including examples from
Chichester, Salisbury, Wareham and Warwick.

The continental element of the hoard is also of great importance, notably
for the fine run of coins of the Liege mint, which include an entirely new
type.

The Pimprez hoard has been officially exported from Paris to London by
certificate from the Ministere de la Culture. Spink are very grateful to
Arnaud Clairand and Michel Prieur of Comptoir General Financier (CGF) for
the rare opportunity of acquiring this important group intact, and are
pleased to offer in this auction a picked selection of one hundred of the
finest English pennies (lots 387-486), many being of exceptional interest,
40 of the continental coins (lots 832-864), and a handsome and photogenic
group of the silver bullion ingots (lots 487-492).

Ingots

The silver ingots, or silver 'cakes', in the Pimprez hoard have an interest
beyond their metal content since, although they conform to no regular weight
standard, they were clearly traded at monetary value and were subdivided
into halves and quarters when required. They were made very simply by
pouring molten silver into a depression, quite possibly in compacted earth
or sand, the lower face being lightly convex with bubble holes and traces of
sediment, the upper face flatter with traces of black slag. They were cut
into sections by a deliberate sword or axe blow to three-quarters of their
depth, the remaining metal flange then being snapped or broken. Metal
analysis has shown that the ingots have a different composition to the coins
in the hoard, containing a higher trace gold content, but their place of
origin, if indeed they all originated at one source, is not certain.



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