The discovery of a huge Viking silver hoard at Cuerdale on the banks of the Ribble in 1840 (Chapters 1 and 10, this volume) produced a flurry of interest from antiquarians and collectors but little consolidated research at the time. Although the hoard has now been described in full (Graham-Campbell 2011), we still have a very limited understanding of the precise context of its discovery in archaeological terms.
Due to the manner in which the hoard was dispersed after discovery, it is impossible to put an exact figure on its contents, but James Graham-Campbell stated that it contained ‘some 7500 coins, together with over 1000 ingots, rings and hack silver pieces.’ The silver was already spread into separate barrow loads of soil and various people’s pockets almost as soon as it was noticed, but fragmentary remains of a lead container and five bone pins were also retrieved, suggesting the items had been buried together in moneybags within a metal box or chest.
The hoard can be dated between 905 and 910 based on the latest coin issues—a time of particular resonance in the turbulent history of the region (Quanrud, Chapter 5). Around 5000 of the coins were Viking issues of York and East Anglia, together with about 1000 Anglo-Saxon coins of Alfred and Edward the Elder, and a similar number of Frankish coins from the Rhineland and Loire areas along with Italian and Byzantine issues. A minor portion of the coins come from further afield, demonstrating the extent of Viking trading links. Four have been attributed to the trading town of Hedeby in southern Denmark, and around fifty Arabic (Kufic) coins range in mintage from Al Andalus in Islamic Spain to Al Banjhir in the Himalayan foothills.
Cuerdale is the most spectacular of a series of silver hoards deposited on the Irish Sea coastline of north-west England in the early decades of the 10th century. The earliest recorded of these was discovered in April 1611 at the Harkirk, a recusant burial ground near Little Crosby (formerly south-west Lancashire, now Merseyside). A hoard of about 300 coins, the deposition of which probably occurred around 910, was discovered in the enclosing ditch and described and illustrated by landowner William Blundell. His notes and a copper engraving of 35 of the coins survive, although the silver has been lost. Kufic coins are represented in another early coin hoard find in the mid-18th century at Dean, near Cockermouth (Cumbria). A mixed hoard containing ingots, hack silver and around 100 Anglo-Saxon coins deposited around 935 or 940 was found at Scotby, east of Carlisle, in 1855.
The spread of metal-detecting activity in recent years added several new examples to those found in earlier decades and centuries. A hoard of 21 Hiberno-Viking arm rings and an ingot found at Huxley near Chester in 2004 was deposited within the same few years at the start of the 10th century as the Cuerdale hoard and was also found with the remains of a lead container.
A hoard of hack silver, bent bars, a section of an ingot, and three Kufic coins was found in 1997 at Tewitfield, Warton, near Carnforth, on the north-eastern margins of Morecambe Bay. In 2002, a small hoard containing an ingot, a bar, a polyhedral blob of silver, and a pierced stone were discovered beside the River Dee south of Chester at Eccleston.
Chester has produced four hoards, the earliest of which is a coin-only hoard found at St John’s Church in 1862 and dated to 917 or 920. A large mixed hoard dating to 965 or 970, with 27 ingots, 120 pieces of hack silver, and 547 coins in a broken Chester-ware pot was found at the Castle Esplanade, Chester, in November 1950 (Thacker 1987). This was an unusual hoard with a very long age-structure (it contained many obsolete coins going back to Alfred’s reign along with the most recent issues used to determine the date of deposition). The hoard is less like mid - and later 10th century hoards in England and more like contemporary hoards in Ireland and the Isle of Man.
A stone ingot mould was found near the Castle Esplanade at Cuppin Street in 1986, which suggests that the hoard may have been associated with silver working area or even the Chester mint, and was possibly a silver worker’s or moneyer’s private reserve of scrap silver that would have been intended for the melting pot. Two more Chester hoards from Eastgate Row and Pemberton’s Parlour (found in 1857 and 1914, respectively) date from the 970s, and their coin-only contents reflect a swing away from the use of bullion. Hoards have continued to be found in the region with surprising regularity. Two major discoveries by metal detectorists in 2011 at Barrow-in-Furness and Silverdale, both on the margins of Morecambe Bay, are discussed by Jane Kershaw in Chapter 10.
Hoards cannot tell us everything we wish to know about patterns of wealth and exchange. Single finds of silver objects and coinage that may have been dropped by mistake during a transaction perhaps convey more readily the actual patterns of use of silver and coins. Occasionally, individual items of Viking silver are found in coastal locations, such as a tapering rod arm ring with twisted ends found on the edge of the Solway Firth on the English-Scottish border near Gretna in the 1970s.
Metal detecting activity has contributed considerable new information to our understanding of the spread of Viking period finds. Recent single finds of Scandinavian objects such as a gold ring found ‘near Kendal,’ a decorated lead weight found near Preston (Lancashire) (Kershaw, Chapter 10, Figure 10.8) and an open-work copper alloy scabbard chape from Chatburn (Lancashire) (Edwards 1998, p. 29) enhance the range evidence hitherto dominated by antiquarian finds.
Finds of objects from coastal locations suggesting early Irish Sea Viking activity include two items of Irish-style gilded copper alloy metalwork, one of which is a human-faced escutcheon from Arnside on the shores of Morecambe Bay (Youngs and Herepath 2001; Youngs 2002). These add to earlier finds of Irish-style metalwork including an interlace-decorated boss from the Ribchester Roman fort (Thompson-Watkin 1883) destroyed in the 1941 bombing of Liverpool Museum (see Meols, below).
Trading activity is easier to detect when numerous discoveries occur at a single location, such as at Meols (Wirral). Meols (name from ON Melr or sand hills) first became known in the 19th century when the sea began to erode a sand spit known as Dove Point. The spit formerly protruded about 500 m into
FIGURE 2.4 Meols from the east, showing the location of the now-vanished Dove Point. (Photo courtesy of Robert Philpott, National Museums Liverpool.)
The Irish Sea from the present northern coast of the Wirral Peninsula (Figure 2.4). As the sea removed the overlying sand dunes, complex archaeological layers dating between the Mesolithic and post-Medieval periods were exposed. We would know little today about Meols but for the devoted attention of a group of antiquarians from 1817-1905.
Foremost amongst them was the Reverend Abraham Hume (1814-1884). His monograph Ancient Meols, of 1863, is a classic of Victorian scholarship but came too early to tell the whole story of the Meols landscape which continued and continues to reveal archaeological evidence. to Hume and others, much of the material discovered at Meols was collected and saved, ultimately to enter museums in Liverpool, Chester, Warrington, and London. Bomb damage to Liverpool Museum in May 1941 caused much disruption, and it took until 2007 for a comprehensive study of the site and collections to be published (Griffiths, Philpott, and Egan 2007).
Finds at Meols of imported metalwork, ceramics, and coinage of the Iron Age, Roman era, and preViking periods indicate that sporadic trade was conducted on the sandy foreshore there for many centuries before the Vikings appeared. Coincident with the time of the Norse settlement in Wirral following the arrival of Ingimund and the rise of nearby Chester as a trading port, Meols experienced an upsurge in trading activity. Amongst the other finds from Meols are several objects suggestive of Viking raiding and trading activity in the 9th or 10th centuries (Figure 2.5).
A small gilded copper-alloy plaque re-used as a strap end is probably an Irish-made object of the 8th century (perhaps a book mount). Nineteen complete and incomplete parts of copper alloy ringed pins of later 9th to early 12th century types are identifiable. The number of ringed pins exceeds the finds at York and is outnumbered only by the number of finds from Dublin (the only place where we know they were manufactured). A drinking horn terminal (now lost), a small six-sided pyramidal bell, a stirrup mount, and a small buckle decorated in derivative versions of early 11th century Ringerike style constitute further evidence of contacts with Dublin and the Danelaw (Griffiths, Philpott and Egan 2007, pp. 58-77).
A small copper alloy bird with suspension loops above and below resembles a similar decorative bird from a balance scale found on the island of Gigha (Argyll) (Grieg 1940, pp. 29-30); see Figure 2.6. Similar examples are also known in Scandinavia. The discovery of the bird mount at Meols adds to the evidence for trade at the site.
Meols probably acted as a seasonal beach market where Cheshire salt, slaves, livestock, lead from mines in Flintshire, possibly copper from the North Wales coast, and portable domestic and dress items were traded and exchanged. The position of Meols on the outermost margins of Mercia nearest to deep water is central to the network at the eastern end of what became a regular Viking trade route between
FIGURE 2.5 Viking weapons (axe, shield boss, and deliberately-bent spearhead) found in 1877 and 1878 from a possible pagan grave at Meols, Wirral. See Griffiths, Philpott, and Egan, 2007, p. 76. (Copyright National Museums Liverpool.)
FIGURE 2.6 Bird mount from a balance scale from Meols with comparable complete example from fatten, Rogaland, Norway. (Petersen 1940)
Dublin, Anglesey, and Liverpool Bay. Meols may have had an illicit role in evading taxes and dues based on its location just outside the fiscal remit of the port of Chester as defined in medieval documents that make it clear that ‘Arnald’s Eye,’ a sandstone reef at the mouth of the Dee, was the outer limit of the port.
Perhaps Meols was protected as a separate trading zone by the semi-independence of the Viking settlements in Wirral. There was also a permanent settlement there. Antiquarian records of the 1870s through the 1890s clearly indicate that buildings were being eroded from under the sand dunes. Extensive evidence of later medieval structures and circular round houses can probably be rejected as relevant to the Viking period, but descriptions of ‘lines of wattle’ forming cattle sheds and nearby stone - and
Clay-walled buildings (approximately 10 x 4 m in size) are strikingly reminiscent of Viking long house-style buildings excavated elsewhere such as at Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey (Redknap 2004).
The local influence of Meols is marked by finds of coinage and other traded items in its hinterland and upriver toward Chester, such as at Moreton and Irby (Philpott, Chapter 7). A small silver ingot of Viking style was found in a field at Ness. Nearby, in the neighbouring village of Puddington, a Frankish denier of Charles the Bald (840-877) minted at Melle was discovered in 1993 (Cowell and Philpott 1993). These Wirral find spots have yet to be investigated further and their locations may well hold further evidence for rural settlement.
As studies of the Danelaw have found (Stocker 2000), the distribution of stone sculpture sites is highly significant in relation to trade and markets. A good example of this is the pattern of parish churches with stone sculptures in North Wirral, at West Kirby, Greasby, Woodchurch, Bidston, and Wallasey. Together they form a semi-circular cluster at the centre of which lies Meols. The place-name Thingwall, found both in Wirral and West Derby, denotes the field of a local assembly site or mound, in a modest fashion not unlike the Norse Ping-vollr/vellir assemblies of Iceland and the Isle of Man.
The Wirral Thingwall site has often been identified with Cross Hill, a low rise near the edge of Thingwall township in central Wirral. Cross Hill has a good view of the peninsula, extending to the Mersey estuary to the east. A low mound may have existed on top, but has been ploughed down to a mere trace. Recent landscape research by Dean Paton revealed two convincing alternative sites, the former site of Thingwall Mill (on a prominent mound now levelled) and a nearby field called Dale Heaps— another reference to mounds. Dale Heaps is significantly at the intersection of three local boundaries (Paton 2011).
A parallel assembly site on the Lancashire side of the Mersey at Thingwall Hall near Roby has been built over. The hall stands on a terraced rise, which is, however, more likely to be a Victorian garden earthwork than a Viking mound.
With good historical, place-name and artefactual evidence for a Viking presence in north-west England, it might be assumed that there would also recognisable archaeological evidence of settlement in the form of buildings, enclosures, and field systems. This has, however, proven a stubborn problem for archaeologists to solve. Excavations of settlement sites have continued sporadically throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Individual site works at Irby and Moreton, Wirral (Philpott, Chapter 7), and Nick Higham’s work at Tatton, Cheshire have begun to fill out what had hitherto been a very sparse picture for rural settlement.
At a number of excavations at rural upland settlement sites in Cumbria in the Duddon Valley (Figure 2.7), finds and fragmentary remains of medieval long houses may hold clues of Viking presence.
FIGURE 2.7 Excavation of medieval long house arguably derived from Scandinavian building tradition at Stephenson’s Ground, Scale, in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria. (Copyright Lake District National Park.)
However, to date, several of these sites have produced material dated much later than the Viking period (Http://www. duddonhistory. org. uk/downloads/longhouses. pdf).
Tantalising radiocarbon dates of the 10 th and 11th centuries have been published in interim reports from settlement sites such as Bryant’s Gill (Dickinson 1985) and a corn-drying kiln from Ewanrigg, Cumbria (Bewley 1987), but a consolidated picture based on final and full publication remains elusive. Aerial photographic campaigns such as those undertaken over many years by Nick Higham in Cumbria and Robert Philpott in Cheshire, Merseyside, and South Lancashire, have revealed some hints of possible sites, generally to be seen against a background of multi-period activity.
Large regional palaeoenvironmental syntheses such as the North-West Wetlands Survey (Cowell and Innes 1994) have cast only oblique and partial light on this period. Geophysical surveys have made limited impacts to date despite their long-standing importance in landscape studies elsewhere. The impacts of newer remote-sensing techniques such as LiDAR on the Viking period archaeology of north-west England are likewise at an early stage, but promise much for the future.
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