I recently picked up a small
pamphlet or off-print, the source of which is unclear that relates to a third century coin find from Roman Britain. It details the gift of some 148
coins from a hoard from July 1879 to the Brighton Free Library and Museum by
the Duke of Devonshire.
The find spot is noted as near
Eastbourne in Sussex and, given the year and detailed listing I thought it
should be easy to track down some further details. A quick search of Robertson’s
Inventory of Romano-British Coin Hoards (IRBCH).
Sure enough it didn’t take that
much looking up. Entry number 728
identifies it as one of the six coin hoards recorded as being from the vicinity
of Beachy Head, the two most well known being the 1961 and 1973 finds.
The find of around 680 coins was
published in Sussex Archaeological Collections 31 (1881) by T Calvert. He notes
that they were discovered between Beachy Head and Birling Gap by a group of men
digging flint. About two feet down the container was struck by a pick causing
the coins to spill out. The Reigns represented are from Valerian to Aurelian
and Postumus through to Tetricus II. In the same journal Charles Roach-Smith summarised
the Duke’s gift to the museum.
There does seem to be a little bit of uncertainty around the actual year of discovery as a brief report in the Archaeological Journal for 1879 ascribes 1878 as the year of discovery, although this does seem to go against the other documented sources.
Calvert, in his 1881 note, makes the
unsupported suggestion that the continental army of Tetricus I that was finally
defeated at Chalons by the forces of Aurelian in AD 274 was largely comprised
of natives recruited in Britain. He goes on “What was more natural, therefore, than
a Sussex man should return, when a fugitive, to his native downs, and there
place in security his hardly earned treasure”.
Roger Bland, when documenting the
1973 Beachy Head hoard (Numismatic Chronicle, 1979), makes reference to all six
finds of radiates from the vicinity including this one (ie 1879, 1899, 1914, 1961, 1964 and 1973). He concludes
that the latest three hoards are probably related as they were found within 20
yards of each other and showed similarities or complimentary features in their
composition. The same cannot be said for the three older finds, the exact find
spots not being recorded. Also the 1899 and 1914 hoards terminate with coins of
Probus, unlike the 1960s onwards hoards that end with Aurelian. He curiously
speculates that the 1879 also might have ended with Probus, although there is nothing
in the contemporary accounts to agree with this hypothesis.
