The Museum of Chelmsford has acquired the Great Baddow Hoard, the largest recorded hoard of Iron Age gold coins ever found in Britain. It very nearly disappeared before it was even known to exist, but now, thanks to a £250,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and other donations, the hoard will be seen by the public a few miles from where it was discovered.

The Great Baddow Hoard consists of 933 gold coins dating to between 60 and 20 B.C. Fragments of what may have been a bronze vessel were also in the group, include a circular piece that was the rim or base of the vessel, pieces from a bronze strip, three fragments of opaque red glass inlaid with bronze strips that may have been ornamentation on the vessel. Archaeologists believe the coins were buried inside the vessel.

The coins come from a time when Iron Age tribes in Britain had first begun striking their own coins using regional dies (metal stamps), after initially importing Celtic coins from overseas.

The Great Baddow Hoard is significant in providing the first archaeological evidence of aggression between the neighbouring Trinovantes and Catuvellauni of the east of England. As Museum of Chelmsford Curator, Claire Willetts, explains:

“Most of the coins in the Great Baddow Hoard are thought to have been produced in the region later associated with the so-called ‘Catuvellauni’ and it is theorised they could have been intended as a tribute payment to Roman general Julius Caesar. The hoard’s discovery in what is traditionally considered Trinovantian territory at Great Baddow may indicate movement or influence from western tribal groups into the east, potentially aligning with accounts of upheaval during Caesar’s second invasion of Britain in 54 BC. While these events were recorded in Roman sources, until now there has been little archaeological evidence to support them, making the Great Baddow Hoard a significant find for our understanding of eastern Britain in the late Iron Age.”

The hoard was discovered in 2020 under shady circumstances, which is why we’re only hearing the real story now. The finder was a metal detectorist who was on private land without the permission of the landowner. That’s illegal. On September 22nd, he found gold coins, He did not declare them to the local finds liaison officer of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). That’s extra illegal.

He told a tenant on the land about the hoard on September 27th, and it was that tenant who informed the landowner. The landowner reported the discovery to the Finds Liaison Officer for Essex the next day. Caught red handed, the finder surrender the hoard to the landowner (513 coins he had already washed, plus 393 coins in a bucket of soil) and was kicked off the property. The landowner handed in the coins to the PAS on October 14th, and the find site was excavated by archaeologists on October 22nd. They found one more gold coin and more bronze fragments from the vessel.

The landowner had obviously refused to allow the finder to return to the site to search for more treasure, but he would not take no for an answer. He was found at the site by Essex police and arrested. They retrieved 23 more coins from him, plus another one from his partner. But there was more shamelessness to come. He contacted the magazine Treasure Hunting and they published an anonymous account of the discovery. It estimated the coin total wrong, and other media outlets picked up garbled versions of the story with the wrong coin dates and location.

What we do know about the original context of the hoard is that it was found at a depth of about two feet under the surface. Photographs taken by the finder show a hole of about four square feet with bronze fragments and gold coins embedded in the side. That means he cut into the hoard when digging.

He was ultimately tried by Chelmsford Magistrates Court and convicted of failure to declare Treasure and attempted theft by finding. The usual reward in treasure cases is the assessed value of the discovery divided 50-50 between the finder and the landowner. Needless to say, this particular finder did not get a dime. Only the landowner received the ex gratia payment.

So this treasure of priceless historical value was almost lost. It could easily have been sold off piecemeal and nobody would have ever known the hoard existed. The other candidate for the record as the largest Iron Age gold coin hoard in Britain, the Whaddon Chase hoard (the type find for the coins in the Great Barrow hoard) found in Buckinghamshire in 1849, was dispersed after its discovery, so nobody even knows how many coins were in it. The estimates range widely from 450 to 2000 coins.

Thankfully that sorry fate was avoided, and the Great Barrow Hoard will first go on public display in a temporary exhibition at the Museum of Chelmsford in the summer of 2026. It will go on permanent display from the spring of 2027.