Talnotrie

NX47SE 2 487 716.

A 9th century AD founder's hoard and 12 coins were found in a peat-moss at Talnotrie (NX 487 716) in 1912. The hoard consisted of small pieces of metal including two pins and a strap-end, all Anglo Saxon, silver wire, a gold ring, a bronze pinhead and weight as well as part of a possible cross, also of bronze. Various other objects including claystone whorls accompanied these.

The coins consisted of 9th century silver pence and Northumbrian stycas. The peat-moss lay on a steep hillside above a 40yd long fence of turf and stone, and in the immediate vicinity of rocky knolls on which Maxwell noted two hut circles and the remains of a small rectangular dwelling. The site was pointed out by Mr Gordon, Talnotrie, who had dug the peats in which the objects were found.

H E Maxwell 1912; D M Wilson 1964; R Dolley and W Cormack 1967

This area is under afforestation and Talnotry farm has been destroyed. No further information was obtained.

Visited by OS (BS) 9 April 1976.

Talnotrie hoard (selection). Talnotrie, Glen of the Bar. Silver, niello, copper-alloy, gold, lead. Anglo-Saxon and insular Celtic; deposited c. 875.

248a. Silver strap-end with animal-head terminal with comma-shaped ears, and niello-inlaid central panel with Trewhiddle-style animal. Length 4.1cm. NMS FC 200.

248b-c. Pair of silver disc-headed pins. Originally linked, with geometric cruciform decoration in the Trwhiddle style. Length of each 7.8cm. NMS FC 201-2.

248d. Gold finger-ring. Flat inner face and slightly-ribbed outer face. Diameter 2cm, weight 1.56gms. NMS FC 205.

248e. Lead weight with cast copper-alloy disc attached to the top by two short pins; this has a chip-carved design of lentoid fields of symmetrical interlace around a central lozenge-shaped field with a quatrefoil knot. Diameter 3cm, weight 88.19 gms. NMS FC 198.

248f. Thirteen coins. These surviving coins comprise four silver pennies of Burgred of Mercia (852-74); copper-alloy pennies (stycas) of Ethelred II (841-4), Redwulf (844), Osbert (849-67), Archbishop Wulfhere (period 854-67) and two illegible; fragments of a denier of Louis the Pious (814-40) and of two 'Abbasid dirhams, one of al-Mutawakkil (AD 846/7-861/2), and one illegible. The coins provide a date of the early to mid 870s, but the remains of a mount on one of the coins of Burgred would allow for a slightly later date for the deposit.

A hoard of fine metalwork, coins, scrap metal and other raw materials used in fine metalworking was salvaged from a cottar's peat fire in 1912, a small quantity of silver having already been melted in the fire. The peat had been cut from a moss of the NW flank of Cairnsmore of Fleet, where hut platforms and boundary dykes were subsequently noted. No further objects were found in the peat cut.

The coins put the deposition of this hoard in the early or mid 870s, and it has been suggested that the burial of the hoard may be associated with the campaigns of Ivar the Boneless in sTrathclyde in 870-1, or Halfdan's activities there in 874-5. The odd mixture of stycas and pennies, together with a dirham, and the presence of a Viking-type weight with an Insular mount attached in a secondary usage suggests that this hoard may be put together from various parcels and also hints at a Viking context for the deposition. The pins and strap-end are of English mid ninth-century origin; the strap-end is a fine example of the type with comma-shaped ears which has a predominantly northern distribution, and the simple geometric ornament of the pins also finds its best parallel in the geometric panelled style of the Trewhiddle-style mounts of swords found in Yorkshire at Gilling, Acomb and Wensley.

L E Webster and J Backhouse 1990.