Kent Archaeological Society purchased an Anglo-Saxon hoard ahead of a London auction

The Kent Archaeological Society has bought a large collection of Anglo-Saxon artifacts from the sixth and seventh centuries known as the Ozengell Hoard.

They were scheduled to be auctioned off at Roseberys on October 28 with an estimated value of £12,000-15,000, but were instead purchased by the society for “further research and the preservation of Kent’s heritage.”

The Ozengell Anglo-Saxon Collection includes a wide array of 1700 Anglo-Saxon items of jewelry, buckles, weapons fittings, glassware, and pottery found in excavations of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground near Ramsgate in Kent.

The first discoveries from this location were made in 1846 during the construction of the Ramsgate-Deal railway. Many of these early finds are in museums including in Liverpool and the British Museum.

The Ozengell Hoard bought by the Society was found in the course of excavations between 1977-1981.

The items were conserved by the Ancient Monuments Laboratory and the Institute of Archaeology and were on loan to The Powell-Cotton Museum in Birmingham, Kent, from 1983 to 2010. However, the vast collection was never displayed in its entirety.

The collection was then returned to landowner, farmer, and businessman David Steed. Four glass finds from this hoard were sold by Christie’s in 2011. The 1700 items, contained within more than 50 boxes, were to be offered as a single lot in the auction.

Some of the stand-out pieces of the collection include a gilt-silver disc brooch set with three wedge-shaped garnets, large numbers of amber and glass beads, a hemispherical glass bowl and two glass globular bottles with narrow necks, a pottery urn decorated with a linear pattern, another decorated with triangles and stippling, a circular incense vessel, copper, bronze and gilt-silver buckles, iron shield bosses, knives and a pair of tweezers with incised decoration.

The Ozengell Collection supplements and expands the society’s nationally significant Anglo-Saxon grave goods collection. Selected objects will be displayed alongside items from the Kent Archaeological Society’s larger collection.

Kent Archaeology