Birmingham and the Staffordshire Hoard

Description
Hilt Fitting Press quality photo Finds number NLM 449 Photo by Daniel Buxton, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Staffordshire Hoard is a recently-discovered cache of gold military objects found in a farmer's field by a treasure-hunter with a metal detector. My Dad would have loved to see this! There are over 1500 items in the hoard, mostly gold, some with intricate garnet cloisonné designs. Most haven't been cleaned of all the dirt on them yet because money had to be raised to pay the farmer and treasure-hunter (3.7 million pounds) before the museum could clean and conserve them. John & I saw a National Geographic special about it and decided to make a visit. Well worth the trip to Birmingham!