The key to the casket

Good old Norman! With over 1000 metal detector finds from the old recreation ground he could keep me in blog ideas for three years. Don’t worry. That isn’t going to happen.

If you want to see more of the finds, heaps of them, then come along to the Museum Miscellany on 3^rd October at 7.30 in Market Lavington Community Hall. One section will be about the finds Norman has made on the field.

But here is one of them and as the title of this post tells you it is the key to a casket.

The key to the casket

This is an object which Norman wasn’t sure about so he took it to the finds officer at the museum in Devizes who gave him the following information.

So we have the idea of a casket key from this and also know this is medieval. This is actually a very broad time period from about 500AD to about 1500AD. That’s 1000 years so not hugely meaningful. It covers a period from not long after the Romans left our shores, through those dark ages of Vikings Saxons and the country divided into different kingdoms, through the Norman Conquest and right up to the Tudor period.

But even with a broad date it is still a nice little item and we can picture the irritation of a person who lost it and was left with no option but to break into the casket to gain access to the contents.

And now it has a home at Market Lavington Museum as an interesting and older curio found on our former recreation ground.

Tags: key, medieval, metal detecting