Back in 2012, metal-detectorist Alan Bates was exploring a field outside the Cheshire town of Knutsford, about 14 miles south-west of Manchester, when he uncovered a group of seven Roman coins and a silver object that later proved to be part of a brooch. Realising the significance of his discovery, Alan immediately stopped detecting and phoned his local Finds Liaison Officer at the Museum of Liverpool. This action allowed a small team from the Museum of Liverpool and Cheshire Archaeology Planning Advisory Service to come and excavate the findspot – and, crucially, preserved as much information as possible about each object’s location. What initially appeared to be only a small group of finds soon transpired to be a hoard of 103 coins, together with brooches, rings, and fragments of the orange ware vessel that is thought to have once housed them.
Found in 2012, the Knutsford Hoard comprises 103 Roman coins, three trumpet brooches, and two finger-rings.
The hoard had not survived intact – its pottery container appears to have been struck by a plough, which had then spread coins and objects across the field – but we were able to pin down its original position by systematically metal-detecting the surrounding area and targeting clusters of activity for test-pitting. Success came when Test Pit II revealed a particularly dense concentration of coins and fragments of pottery – 21 in all, forming the lower wall of a jar or flagon made from locally produced Wilderspool Oxidised ware.
As for the Knutsford Hoard’s contents, out of the 103 coins that were excavated from the plough soil, 101 were silver denarii (a not-inconsiderable sum, representing around a third of a Roman soldier’s annual pay); there were also two larger, lower-value copper-alloy sestertii. It is possible that these latter coins had been used as some kind of stopper to secure the pot holding the denarii, though – as the vessel is too incomplete to be sure that it had a narrow-enough neck for this to have worked – this can only be speculation. However they had been stored, the coins are illuminating. Between the advent of imperial rule under Augustus (r. 27 BC-AD 14) to the last Roman emperors, there were more than 230 rulers throughout the Roman Empire. The Knutsford Hoard gives just a small snapshot of their coinage, with 24 individuals represented by its contents, but when we focus more locally, this group of finds adds a significant amount to our archaeological knowledge of the area.
Revisiting research and challenging conclusions