Find Spot record 147/1/1 - New Street Hoard

<1> Davey P & Forster E, 1975, Bronze Age Metalwork from Lancashire and Cheshire, no.125-29 (Monograph). SCH488.

Illustrated

<2> Society of Antiquities London, 1921-2014, The Antiquaries Journal, Vol.7 p.62-4 (Jackson JW) (Journal/Periodical). SCH284.

Illustrated

<3> Ordnance Survey, 1870-1982, Ordnance Survey Archaeological Record Card, SJ86 SE 6 (Index). SCH2487.

A more precise location of the hoard (SJ 86392 62628) and sketch map.

<4> Harris, B.E. (ed), 1987, Victoria County History - A History of the County of Chester: Volume I, p.98-101 (Book). SCH3556.

Further illustration and discussion.

<5> Jackson JW, 1936, The Prehistoric Archaeology of Lancashire and Cheshire, p.91-93 (Article in Journal). SCH9015.

<6> Stephens W B, 1970, The Archaeology of the Congleton Area (Book). SCH3035.

<7> Lynch F & Burgess C, 1972, Prehistoric Man in Wales and the West, p.236 & 267 (Book). SCH2715.

<8> Varley, W. J. & Jackson, J. W., 1940, Prehistoric Cheshire (Book). SCH2692.

<9> Longley D, 1977-1978, Longley Archive, no.162 (Paper Archive). SCH2005.

<10> Cheshire County Council, 1992-1995, Cheshire Past, Issue , p.9 (Newsletter). SCH870.

A hoard of Late Bronze Age metalwork was found in New Street, Congleton in 1925 during the digging of foundations for a new school. It consists of an exceptionally well-preserved leaf-shaped socketed spearhead with two crescent -shaped or lunate openings flanking the socket, a fine example of a socketed barbed spearhead, a small socketed axe head decorated with three ribs, and a bronze tube (possibly a spear-shaft ferrule) in two sections. There was originally part of a second tube with an expanded end section, but this was stolen from the library in 1942 and never recovered. The hoard appears to date from the Ewart Park phase of the Late Bronze Age, c.900-800BC.

X-radiology revealed previously unsuspected casting flaws in the barbed spearhead and has illustrated the full extent of the stress cracks, only just visible to the naked eye, in the metal of both the lunate spearhead and the ferrule/tube. Faults such as these might suggest that these items were associated with a travelling bronzesmith.