FINGER RING

Copper-alloy finger-ring, now missing much of the hoop. The hoop has two breaks, one very fresh and one fairly fresh; it is biconvex in cross-section and a minimum of 4 mm wide. The surviving part shows that the ring was originally fairly large; the surviving dimension across the hoop is 29 mm. The bezel is oval, raised above the hoop, and measures 12 x 13 mm. It is engraved with two initials which are hard to decipher. When held one way up, the central initial is a double-barred A with the left-hand stem (on the impression) vertical and the right-hand stem curved. There is a small crown-like trefoil on the horizontal top. To the right is a vertical stem and a small hooked line which might form an h. When the bezel is held the other way up, the single vertical stem plus the curving line become an R, with a double bar and vertical line possibly forming a double-barred H. The curious hooked line to the left of the R remains to be explained, and the crown-like motif is now below a baseline. Neither reading is entirely satisfactory but perhaps the evidence of the crown-like motif points to Ah rather than RH. The form of the ring is slightly unusual as well, but the use of crowned initials points to a 15th- or early 16th-century date.