In the 1860s, the Yorkshire Museum received an unusual donation from Thomas Gott, a resident of Knaresborough. Gott was an ironmonger, but the metal plates, bowls, and other items that he had brought with him were much older than the objects that he was accustomed to working with. The artefacts were, in fact, the contents of a newly discovered Roman hoard, but Gott refused to reveal where this collection had been found. Even when he returned to the museum in 1876 to hand over the remaining portion of the hoard, Gott remained silent on the subject – and, as he died the following year, the secret of the source of the metalwork appeared to have died with him.
For almost 150 years, the mystery endured, and while today the objects – now known as the Knaresborough Hoard and displayed at the Yorkshire Museum – are recognised as one of the largest and most unusual hoards of late Roman metalwork ever found in Britain, no detailed analysis of the collection’s contents had ever been carried out, and little was known about how or where it had been discovered. This picture has dramatically changed, however, thanks to recent research based at Newcastle University. Recently published in The Antiquaries Journal (see ‘Further reading’ below), the study was carried out as part of the wider Knaresborough and Irchester Roman Hoards Project, which is led by James Gerrard, Professor of Roman Archaeology at the university.
The Knaresborough strand of this initiative included detailed analysis of historical documents and maps, drawing on special collections from Leeds University; in-depth research into the life of Gott himself, by Sally Gerrard; cutting-edge scientific analysis of the ancient metalwork at the Yorkshire Museum, by Marco Romeo Pitone; and the first comprehensive study of the hoard objects themselves, by Newcastle MA student Jessica DeMaso, through the Yorkshire Museum’s ‘Old Collections, New Questions’ initiative (funded by Arts Council England).
