The Patching Hoard

In April 1997 two metal detectorists searching a field at Patching, on the South Downs edge north-west of Worthing, with the landowner's permission, found five late Roman gold coins. They reported them to the coroner's officer, who took them to Worthing Museum, where they were identified as solidi of Arcadius, Honorius and Valentinian III. At the British Museum two of the Valentinian coins were recognised as Visigothic copies.

The finders went back with their detectors and a mini digger and recovered seventeen more solidi, two gold rings, twenty silver coins and a quantity of scrap silver before they were persuaded to stop. Worthing Museum and the Sussex Archaeological Society then ran a small emergency excavation with the finders checking the spoil. It found no pit or building, but it did find two land drains, one laid in the late 19th century and one around the Second World War, running along the line of the scattered coins. The hoard had evidently been broken up when the drains went in, and the workmen may have pocketed some of it.

What survived makes Patching the latest hoard of Roman coins known from Britain. Its newest coin is a Visigothic solidus in the name of Libius Severus, who became emperor in 461, half a century after Roman rule in Britain had ended. The coins span 337 to 461, besides one worn Republican denarius, so they had been gathered over several generations. The older silver had circulated in Britain and is worn; the late Visigothic gold is almost as fresh as the day it was made and was probably assembled on the Continent before being brought to Britain.

The hoard is more than money. There are 54 pieces of scrap silver weighing 317.58 g, close to a Roman pound, including fragments of late Roman spoons, a pin, buckle tongues and a small chape from a sword scabbard. That fitting resembles types found in Germanic graves on the Continent of the later 5th century. The two gold rings are plain heavy bands, probably made for the thumb; analysis showed the gold was barely refined river gold. Together they show a society in which coins were valued for their weight of metal, alongside hacksilver, rather than as currency.

Patching lies about 2 km from the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery on Highdown Hill, which was in use when the hoard was buried, and the findspot can be seen from its ramparts. Whether the owner was a Briton, an incoming Saxon or someone who served on the Continent cannot be known, but the hoard is rare first-hand evidence for a poorly understood period in Sussex, when 5th-century settlements are known from only a handful of sites.