In one of our earliest blog posts, we discussed the Canterbury Treasure which is currently on display at Canterbury Roman Museum. The hoard consists of mostly silver spoons, together with some other objects such as ingots, and gold jewellery and an unusual object which is much debated (see our post here).
A few years ago, a late Roman spoon in the collections of Buxton Museum and Art Gallery was revealed to have originally been part of the Canterbury Treasure. How did a spoon from the hoard end up more than 200 miles away in a different museum?
After its discovery, several items including this spoon were deliberately removed before the hoard was reported as Treasure Trove. Though the other items were quickly identified and also declared Treasure Trove, the spoon was sold by an antiquities dealer and found its way into Buxton Museum’s collection.
Following the recent closure of one of their gallery spaces, employees at Buxton Museum and Art gallery were reviewing the objects previously on display which included the spoon. Through incredible detective work, they pieced together old records and realised that the spoon had originally been part of the Canterbury Treasure. The spoon is now on display at Canterbury Roman Museum with the rest of the hoard.
Many late Roman hoards are antiquarian discoveries and disappeared after entering the antiquities market. The story of the Canterbury spoon reminds us that objects from now lost hoards may be hiding in plain sight in museum collections across Britain.
You can read more about the spoon and see an image here: https://buxtonmuseumandartgallery.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/the-strange-case-of-the-wandering-spoon/
