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- The background above is a view across Llanddona
Beach near the location where the hoard was discovered.
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- The Llanddona Hoard was discovered with the aid of
metal detectors on Llanddona Beach, Red Wharf Bay between September 1999
and August 2006. Almost 1000 silver coins were recovered, English
pennies of Edward I-II from various mints, Irish pennies of Edward I,
Scottish Sterlings of Alexander III and John Baliol and various
Continental Esterlins from the Low Countries. The coins were reported to
the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff and declared Treasure under the
Treasure Act of 1996. The Isle of Anglesey Museum (Oriel Ynys Môn)
acquired several hundred coins from the hoard, the balance of 649 coins
being returned to the finders who released the hoard onto the market.
The coins offered for sale here represent all of the coins available for
purchase.
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- Found within a 50m2 area of the beach,
there is no doubt in the opinion of Edward Besly1, Assistant
Keeper of Numismatics at the National Museum of Wales that the coins are
from a single hoard. There is evidence from the concretion on one coin,
which preserved evidence of a fine plain weave textile, that the coins
were most probably contained within a cloth container. It is therefore
likely in the opinion of Mr. Besly that the hoard was perhaps lost
accidently from a beached vessel in the bay or by a person crossing the
sands. The last theory is very likely given that the 3.5 mile walk
across the sands has long been used as short cut. In this context it is
easy to imagine someone being caught out by the tide and either losing
their purse or possibly their life as well. Local tradition makes
frequent reference to shipwrecks and this is another possibly, however
the very localized deposition of the hoard would suggest otherwise. From
the latest coin in the hoard it would appear to have been lost around
1330. The composition of the hoard is very typical of similar finds from
this period, except for an unusually high proportion of coins from the
ecclesiastical mint at Durham.
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| Link to a BBC News website story on the hoard:
click here |
- Below is a summary of the hoard by country, ruler and
mint:
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- ENGLAND, Edward I (1272-1307) and Edward II
(1307-1327)
- London (412) *
- Canterbury (242) *
- Durham (138) *
- Bristol (17) *
- Bury St. Edmunds (54) *
- Chester (2)
- Exeter (2) *
- Kingston-upon-Hull (3) *
- Lincoln (4) *
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne (9) *
- York (23) *
- Berwick-upon-Tweed (15) *
- Uncertain (9) *
- Irregular and Imitative (5) *
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- IRELAND
- Edward I (1272-1307), Dublin (8) *
- Edward I (1272-1307), Waterford (3) *
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- SCOTLAND
- Alexander III (1249-1286) (13) *
- John Baliol (1292-1296) (4) *
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- CONTINENTAL
- John of Louvain (2) *
- Valéran I de Ligny (1304-1553), Serain (1)
- Gauchier de Châtillon (1313-1322), Yves (3) *
- Brabant Jean III (1312-1355), Brussels (1)
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- TOTAL (970)
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- * Indicates coins acquired by Isle of Anglesey Museum
(Oriel Ynys Môn), either all of this type or a selection of.
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The general condition of the hoard is typical of a beach
find, many coins are somewhat porous from reaction with the salt water and
with signs of abrasion from the sand. Indeed many coins still have sand
fused onto them. All of the coins were examined and indentified by the
National Museum of Wales. |
| 1 Besly, Edward, "A Fourteenth Century Hoard
from LLanddona, Anglesey", BNJ 72, pp169-171, 2002. |
