I recently donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum's Seaton Down Hoard appeal, which aims to buy the collection of over 22,000 Roman coins for the museum and to ensure they stay in a public collection in Devon. I wanted to explain why…
First off I should admit some bias – I am from Exeter, I studied archaeology at university and I am a museum curator, though not of an archaeology collection and not a museum in the South West. Therefore a collection of Roman coins found near my home town and which the local museum wants to collect is the kind of thing I get very, very excited about.
I gave my money to the appeal for several reasons.
The first is that this is one of the largest coin hoards found anywhere across the area of the old Roman Empire, whch stretched from southern Scotland to the boarder of Egypt and Sudan. Of that whole, vast empire that lasted for hundreds of years a field in East Devon provided us with the largest collection of Roman coins. When you stop to think about that for a moment, its pretty incredible.
The coin hoard will be valued by an independent panel at the British Museum. We know, however, that its value when buried was surprisingly low – the equivalent of just 4 gold coins or the pay of a worker for two years. But we just don't know the future research value. A massive find like this provides us with so many unanswered questions – who buried it? Why? Why were there so many low valve coins?! Keeping it at RAMM allows people to come back to it again and again to help answer these questions, and any others future researchers can come up with.
Keeping it in a public museum in Devon also allows it to be put on display, so that people now and in the future can enjoy it. RAMM is a great museum, it won the 'Museum of the Year' Art Fund Prize in 2012, and is the best place for these coins. If the hoard isn't purchased by RAMM there's no guarantee that another museum will be able to buy it, and it faces the possibility of being brought by a private collector. If this happens there's no guarantee it will be available for the public to see ever again. The collection was presumably buried by a Devonian 1700 years ago, and I think it's right that it stays here so that future Devonians can enjoy it.
Another reason I donated is because Laurence Egerton, the metal detectorist who found the hoard, did everything right. Once he realised its importance he stopped digging, and reported it to the landowner and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. This allowed archaeologists to properly excavate the site and avoid the loss of information about the find. He even slept in his car for three nights to guard the site. Dedication like that deserves the reward of seeing the coin hoard in public hands.
And finally the coroner has legally declared the find 'treasure', and when do I get a chance to put my money towards buying treasure?
