Armorican Coin Hoards in the Channel Islands

Extract

‘He lifted a large boulder and discovered five hundred Armorican coins. For countless years a large boulder had lain undisturbed in the corner of a field belonging to Miss Amy. … Time and again it had been scraped and chipped by ploughs, but nobody had ever thought of moving it. But on Tuesday morning it fouled the plough once too often and seventeen-year old Peter Langlois decided that it was time to remove it’. This passage, quoted from the Evening Post of 25th January last, records one of the most important discoveries ever made in the island; it was made on 22nd January 1957, at Le Catillon de Haut, in the parish of Grouville.

Jersey has the distinction of being the home of a very active learned society with a Museum that forms a true centre of archaeological research; it is well known to its citizens and has a reputation reaching far beyond its borders. My friends Father Burdo, Major Rybot, the learned numismatist, and Mr Emile Guiton, the Curator, were so kind as to invite me to examine this latest discovery, of which I made a preliminary inventory in February. Its interest is very great.… But before proceeding to an examination of the hoard I should like to place it in its proper perspective and to give a short summary of earlier discoveries, in so far as these are known. Mrs Jacquetta Hawkes has already listed these finds in her Archaeology of the Channel Islands. Here I shall confine myself to the numismatic details that characterize them.