'Hoard puts Worcestershire into the history books'

A hoard of gold and silver Roman coins, found near Worcester and said to have been enough to pay a legionnaire's salary for six years, have gone on public display for the first time.

The coins, expected to be valued at more than £100,000 in today's money, were discovered in Leigh and Bransford by a member of the public in late 2023.

They went on show at the city's art gallery and museum on Saturday, where they will remain until the end of March.

"This is tremendously exciting," said senior curator Deborah Fox. "It's lovely for Worcestershire to have a story that fits into a historical framework that's known nationally and internationally."

Formally declared treasure, the Worcestershire Conquest Hoard, as it is known, consists of 1,368 Iron Age and Roman coins, including the largest collection from the reign of Emperor Nero ever found.

Ms Fox said it was a very unusual find.

"In Worcestershire we were right on the edge of the Roman Empire," she explained. "We wouldn't have expected to find this kind of discovery on our patch.

"Specialists and academics are coming together now to try and work out what that means for the story of the conquest of Britain by the Romans.

"There's a Roman historian called Tacitus who talks about disarming the tribes between the Severn and the Trent, and suddenly we find ourselves right in the middle of those history books."

Ms Fox said while the coins would have been enough to pay a Roman legionnaire's salary for six years, it's also thought some of the coins never entered circulation.

"They're so fine that they've come directly from the Mint in Rome to the Treasury on the Capitoline Hill..." she said, "and by boat to Britain and then have ended up in rural Worcestershire."

At the end of March, the treasure will go to be formally valued at the British Museum - at which point Museums Worcestershire will have four months to try to raise the funds to buy it.

"We're expecting the value to be upwards of £100,000, which is why we've started now," said Ms Fox.

"We're also raising money to try and make sure we can get it onto permanent display because we don't want to acquire it and then not share it."

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