Livery buttons were made from polished, gilded or tinned brass and once adorned the jackets and uniforms of staff and retainers working for large households in the later 18th and 19th centuries. A common type of detecting find, they were designed to demonstrate status and wealth and bore distinctive crests derived from the heraldry of …more
Category: Post Medieval
A unique farthing token from the Thames
The third quarter of the 17th century saw a serious deficit of circulating copper small change caused in part by the English civil wars of the 1640s and the cessation of the royal (rose) farthing coinage of Charles I. With everyday transactions desperately in need of usable currency, local and regional traders, craftsmen, civic corporations …more
Hidden Objects and Old Buildings
The artefacts recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) can help illuminate all sorts of mysteries from the past – including long forgotten traditions and strange superstitions which were once a part of ordinary domestic life. Sometimes these finds can turn up in situations more commonly dealt with by other heritage specialists – such as …more
A unique late Papal Bulla from Odiham, Hampshire.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme provides a unique avenue for documenting small finds which, although not associated with any archaeological context, can still yield important new information about local and national history purely on their own merits. One such find recently recorded by the Surrey FLO, is SUR-F847F3 – a papal bulla or lead document seal …more
