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Iron Age coins dating 60-20BC go on display

Shivani ChaudhariEssex
Zoie O'Brien/BBC A woman wearing a black top and a dark beaded necklace with short hair. She is standing next to a small three tier stand with coins on each stand. She is smiling at the camera.Zoie O'Brien/BBC
Museum of Chelmsford has become home to the largest collection of handmade coins ever recorded in Britain for the Iron Age

The largest collection of handmade coins ever recorded in Britain from the Iron Age has gone on display in Essex.

The coins were first unearthed in Great Baddow, near Chelmsford, in 2020, and were described as "a nationally significant discovery".

Claire Willetts, curator and exhibitions officer at the Museum of Chelmsford, which is hosting the exhibition, said: "The size and its enormity is incredibly exciting, but it's just the fact that we wouldn't expect to find this in Essex and in Chelmsford."

The Great Baddow Coin Hoard exhibition went on display at the museum on Saturday 18 July and is due to be there for a year.

The coins were buried in a field and date back to 60-20BC which makes the collection of 935 coins 2,000 years old.

Willetts said the hoard's purpose remained a mystery, but suggested it may have been an offering to the gods or a tribute to Julius Caesar.

She added: "Perhaps these coins have been made by someone quite wealthy and they have been intentionally buried in a small spot together."

Zoie O'Brien/BBC A collection of gold coins put out on a table with a purple table cloth. The round coin closest to the camera has a hand with a heart inside the hand.Zoie O'Brien/BBC
Claire Willetts said each coin had been handcrafted which meant all of them were very different to one another

She said each handcrafted coin had a unique pattern and were the types of coins more likely found in the West of England.

"It opens up a lot more questions than it does answers. But it challenges our understanding of that time in a new way," continued Willetts.

"So it makes us wonder if people moved further east then we previously thought. It challenges our understanding of the Iron Age and all the surrounding counties and our understanding of that."

Zoie O'Brien/BBC Two gold coins are placed on a table, one coin has a horse, a leaf and a sun and the second coin has a array of different shapes Zoie O'Brien/BBC
Great Baddow Coin Hoard exhibition will be open from 18 July to 11 April 2027.

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