Staffordshire Hoard gets a permanent gallery at the city museum

A new permanent gallery dedicated to the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever found, has opened at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

The gallery gives visitors the chance to see some of the finest pieces from the hoard, and to learn about the story of its discovery and what it tells us about life in Anglo-Saxon England.

A remarkable find

The hoard was discovered on 5 July 2009 by Terry Herbert, a member of a metal detecting club, in a recently ploughed field near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield in Staffordshire. Over the following days, hundreds of gold and silver objects were recovered from the site.

It is the largest treasure of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver objects ever found, eclipsing in quantity the treasure found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939.

Warrior treasure

Most of the objects are fittings from weapons, particularly sword hilts, decorated with gold and garnets. The hoard is thought to have been buried between 650 and 675, when the area was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, and the objects themselves were probably made in the sixth and seventh centuries.

Experts are still working to understand why the hoard was buried and by whom. The fact that it is mostly made up of war gear, much of it stripped from weapons, has led to suggestions that it may have been trophies taken from defeated enemies.

Saved for the region

The hoard was declared treasure under the Treasure Act 1996 and valued at £3.285 million. It was bought jointly by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, after a public fundraising campaign that attracted donations from people across the country and around the world.

The two museums share the collection, with parts displayed in Birmingham and parts in Stoke-on-Trent, and some items going on tour.

Ongoing research

Since the discovery, a major research and conservation project has been under way to clean, study and piece together the thousands of fragments. Many of the pieces were found broken or bent, and conservators have been painstakingly reassembling them.

The research has already revealed new details about Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship, including the extraordinary skill of the goldsmiths who worked with tiny pieces of garnet.

A must-see

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in Chamberlain Square, is one of the city's most popular attractions, home to a world-famous collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. The hoard has been one of its biggest draws since it was first displayed there in 2009, when thousands of people queued to see it.

The new gallery gives the treasure a fitting permanent home, and entry to the museum remains free.