Treasuring Our Collection

2017 marks the 20^th anniversary of the Treasure Act, which states that you must legally report any finds classed as Treasure by the Act to the coroner.

To celebrate this anniversary, we have a new display in the Sun Lounge that shows objects in our collection that have been acquired through the Treasure Act. Also on display are objects that should be classified as Treasure but predate the Act, as well as a couple of red herrings. If you’re popping in to visit us this winter, use the pointers below to help you figure out which of these objects is genuine Treasure!

Treasure in the Sun Lounge

Treasure is defined in different ways by the Act, but to summarise, it includes:

• Any metal object containing at least 10% either gold or silver and at least 300 years old when found.
• Prehistoric metal, provided any part of it is precious metal
• Prehistoric metal of any composition, if it is found in a group of two or more objects as part of the same find
• Two or more coins from the same find provided they are at least 300 years old when found and contain 10% either gold or silver

Any object that classes as Treasure must be reported to the coroner within 14 days of its discovery. After this it will be identified by the local Finds Liaison Officer, and may eventually be purchased by a museum.

This Act protects our cultural heritage and allows nationally important items to be recorded and preserved for everybody to appreciate and enjoy. Through this Act, we’re been able to acquire the incredible Beau Street Hoard, the Timsbury Hoard, and a lovely gold posy ring from Keynsham with the phrase “a frends [sic] gift” inscribed inside the band.

Posy ring from Keynsham with close up showing the inscription

If you’re out and about and you do dig up something interesting, make sure you get in touch with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Whether it’s treasure or not, your discoveries will be photographed, identified, and recorded to help us understand more about our history and archaeology!

Zofia

Collections Assistant

Tuesday Times Tables: The Timsbury Hoard

I have spent the majority of my volunteering time over the last 2 years working on the Beau St Hoard, and during that time, I discovered a whole new love of Roman coins. So, when the Beau St project was finished, and I got the chance to do a handling table for the Tuesday Times Tables, I wanted to choose a different group of coins to show off. As the Collections team were going to Timsbury for the Festival of Archaeology, what better choice than the Timsbury Hoard?

The Beau St Hoard has 17,577 coins (or thereabouts!), so in comparison, the Timsbury Hoard, with only 20 silver coins, is very tiny. However, the coins themselves are just as interesting.

 The Whole Hoard

The coins were found in 2011 in the village of Timsbury, about 7.5 miles south west of Bath. They were discovered separately by a metal detectorist who was detecting in a field. As they were found in a small area, even though they weren’t together in a pot or box, they are still considered a hoard.

They cover roughly 100 years of Roman Imperial history, from 141AD to 249AD. The earliest coin depicts Faustina the Elder (wife of Emperor Antoninus Pius), and the latest shows Emperor Philip I. When Faustina’s coin was minted, the Empire was in safe hands. By the time Philip’s coins were issued, the Empire was in turmoil, with almost all the Emperors murdered by the army or their successors.

I chose 5 of the 20 coins from the hoard as handling objects for my table. These included the earliest coin, one of the latest coins, and my favourite coin from the hoard. I don’t think many people believed me that we would let them handle real Roman coins that were over 1700 years old!

 My favourite coin!

My favourite coin from the hoard is a denarius from Emperor Septimius Severus, who ruled from 193-211AD. He was the first African emperor of Rome. He also renovated Hadrian’s Wall, invaded Caledonia (Scotland), and died in York. On the back, or reverse, of the coin, is a picture of an ancient African goddess known in Rome as Dea Caelestis (Goddess of the Sky). She is riding a lion, which is jumping over a spring. It’s a complicated picture, but it shows how detailed and interesting the coins could be!

Can you imagine if modern coins had such exciting pictures on them?

Emily

Volunteer

Romans in Radstock

Last year the Beau Street Hoard came to Radstock museum in the form of a Roadshow.  This event proved to be so successful that last month Radstock asked the Roman Baths collection team to bring the coins back, this time as a temporary display. It would be during the village’s ‘Radstock in Bloom,’ this year’s theme being ‘Romans in Radstock.’

Unbelievably, Susan and Verity asked me to put this display together. I was over the moon when asked if I wanted to do it, for display design is something I want to do in the future. Immediately I began brainstorming and researching different subjects and approaches for this exhibit. I had to consider what would catch the public’s interest, show them that this collection was not just ‘a bunch of old coins’ but something fascinating and historically important.

Eventually I settled upon focusing on the coin reverses and their connotations. This idea was spurred by my interest in the reverses for the Roman women on the coins. All of them (except for Otacilia and her hippo) were paired with a symbol or deity that promoted their character. I noticed this when cataloguing Herennia Etruscilla’s coins: On many is the image of Pudicitia, the female version of Roman Virtus. There are no English equivalents for either word, but in short Virtus was the ideal roman male while Pudicitia was the ideal roman female, staying out of trouble and remaining loyal to her husband. Looking at the other ladies, all their coins followed the same idea. Salonina’s coin depicted Juno, the Queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage. Thus her character and status as Empress were upheld by associating herself with the world’s most loyal wife and most powerful goddess.

I then moved on to study the Emperors’ coins. Like the ladies their coins served to promote their image, but unlike the ladies they covered far more different stances. Elagabalus had the military standards and an eagle on his coins, showing him as a strong emperor who would continue Rome’s legacy of glory and conquest. Hostilian compared himself to the war god Mars, a strong favourite of Rome, embodying the perfect Roman soldier. Severus Alexander even had Annona, the representation of the grain supply to Rome, in an attempt to depict himself as a competent ruler who would sustain a prosperous Rome.

Before working on this display my knowledge about these coins was very limited. That is not to say I became a coin know-it-all overnight, but researching and having hands-on experience really gave me an in-depth chance at learning more about these ancient windows to the past.

Flora,   Collections Placement

Debasement and deception: The 3rd Century crisis and the Beau Street Hoard.

The Roman Empire has always been famous for the monuments of Rome and a prosperous Empire, spanning most of modern Europe and the Mediterranean. So it is surprising to know that, in the 3^rd Century AD, a very serious financial crisis took place, caused by prolonged civil wars and invasions. The Beau Street Hoard contains coins from a long date range (32 BC - 275 AD) and so it tells the story of this crisis.

At the start of the Roman Empire the metal used to make coins was of very high quality. The silver coins issued by early Emperors (such as Augustus and Tiberius) contain around 98-100% silver. As time wore on however, the cost of maintaining a huge Empire put financial strain on the Emperors. Base metals, such as iron and copper, were added to the silver to make it less pure and cheaper to produce. This process is called debasement. By the start of the 3rd Century AD, only around 40% silver was being used to produce the main denomination of the period, known as the radiate. 

Things only got worse as the 3rd Century progressed. The Romans faced threats from both the Northern and Eastern Frontiers. The Northern frontier provinces, Gaul and Britain, even formed a breakaway Empire. Severe financial strain, caused by the cost of wars on the frontiers, meant that the silver content of the radiate was reduced to less than 10%. Images of coins from the Beau Street Hoard show a timeline of debasement in the Roman Empire.

Timeline of debasement – left to right

50s A.D. Nero denarius: 90% silver

190s-200s A.D. Septimius Severus denarius: 65% silver

250s A.D. Trajan Decius radiate: 40% silver

260s A.D. Gallienus radiate: 20% silver

270s A.D. Tetricus I radiate: 1-2% silver

As well as debased coins, unofficial copies of the radiate are frequently found in Britain. These coins are known as barbarous radiates. The production of copies had always been a problem in the Roman Empire, but by the mid-3^rd Century AD it had become endemic. Presumably, when official supplies ran low, coins were produced locally to meet demand.

There are examples of barbarous radiates from the Beau Street hoard and images taken by the Roman Baths U3A volunteers show just how different these copies were. As well as being smaller and thinner, barbarous radiates also have very poor quality images and inscriptions. It’s a wonder anyone was fooled at all!

An official coin of the Emperor Claudius II and an unofficial copy (right) from the Beau St Hoard. This particular coin was issued after the death of Claudius in 270 AD and the reverse shows an altar.

An official coin of the Emperor Quintillus (270 AD) and an unofficial copy (right) from the Beau St Hoard. The reverse of the coins shows Pax (Peace) holding a branch and caduceus.

Emma, Future Curator

Money Mondays: Commemorative Coinage

Beau the Hippo has become the emblem of the Beau Street Hoard, and we’ve learnt how a Hippo ended up on a Roman coin from an early blog post by Susan which you can read here.

A  Hippo was just one of a number of animals depicted on coins by Philip I in 248AD to commemorate 1000 years since the founding of Rome. These animals were brought to Rome to be part of a series of games held for the anniversary in arenas, such as the Coliseum, around Rome. Other coins from the anniversary show the legend associated with the founding of Rome, of twins Romulus and Remus being nursed to health by a She-Wolf.

Taking this concept of coins commemorating specific events or occasions I decided to investigate what other coins there might be in the Roman Baths collection that are commemorative or celebrating key events for my Money Mondays display.

What I discovered while going through the collections database was a whole range of coins and medals that had been used to commemorate events, anniversaries or people.

As the Royal Mint are the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, the coins of the UK, commemorative souvenirs have been a popular way of marking Royal events such as Jubilees for the last three centuries. My display included a whole range of Royal events, from a coin celebrating the birth of James II in 1633 right up to a very shiny five pound coin for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, with a few coronations and deaths in between! Key moments in battles and important treaties can also be found on coins. Two examples I chose for display included the Treaty of Paris in 1814 and a striking medal of the Duke of Wellington for the Battle of Waterloo!

I even discovered some medals commemorating local events in Bath such as Queen Charlotte’s visit in 1817 which brought my research to the Records Office to read through some issues of the Bath Chronicle from the time.

The display generated a lot of interest on the night and I particularly enjoyed being able to display items from 248AD right up to 2012 which all connected! The variety of coins from different centuries and eras helped to contextualise the Beau Street Hoard coins in a new way too!

Holly Furlong, Leicester Placement Student

Mint innit - How was money made?

One of the questions the Collections staff and volunteers are frequently asked during a Beau Street Hoard event is ‘how are coins made’? So when I was asked to put together one of the Money Monday handling sessions I thought it would be a good time to have a look in more detail at The Roman Baths collection of Roman and Medieval coins, how they were made, who made them and where this happened.

Texts from the Roman and Medieval period give little away when it comes to making coins and so archaeology has been used to help recreate some of the process. The first step was to produce a blank coin by pouring molten metal into a circular mould. Once the blank was cool enough, the design for the coin would be stamped onto the blank using dies (punches). The metal would be heated so that it was malleable and the coin placed in between two dies, which would then be struck with a hammer.

The Roman Baths have their very own coin die and blanks to strike coins.

So who made coins and where did this happen? Roman coins were initially produced in Rome by a set of three magistrates. As the Empire began to expand more mints were created and others were closed down. The collection at The Roman Baths comes from far and wide. There is even a coin that was made in Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey).

A map showing where the Beau Street Hoard coins were made

Medieval coins were initially made across England and Wales by individuals known as moneyers. You may be able to see on the map that there was even a mint at Bath. The earliest coins known to have been struck at Bath were issued by Edward the Elder (AD899-924/5) and the mint remained in use until the late 12^th Century.

A map showing mint towns during the period c.973-1158

© Martin Allen 2012

There were however, many changes made to the production of coins during the Medieval period. In the 13^th Century mints were placed under the control of officials known as masters and wardens. There was also a radical reduction of mint towns during the 13^th and 14^th Century and, by the 15^th Century, the only regularly functioning mint was in London.

Emma, Future Curator

Money Mondays: Septimius Severus coins

Beyond the most familiar use, can you imagine in which way can a coin be used? It can be used, for example, to illustrate history.

During the Roman Empire coins were a means of propaganda and celebration of dynasties as well. Roman Emperors had always used coins to promote themselves, representing their victories and their relatives also through symbolism.

For my Money Monday handling table I chose to use coins from the Beau Street Hoard to look at Lucius Septimius Severus  who achieved several victories during his reign. One of the most important ones was against the Parthian Empire, the archenemy of the Roman Empire for centuries. This achievement was so important for the Empire and for Severus' dynasty that, in order to celebrate this big happening, a monumental triumphal arch was built in the Roman Forum in Rome and several celebratory coins were minted all over the Empire. Some of these represented the Parthian victory and the greatness of Roman Empire containing some well-known symbols to deliver the message.

The Winged Victory

The Nike (the winged Victory) symbolized the good result in a war or campaign as well as some Goddesses such as Minerva which was the Goddess of Strategy.

Minerva, the Goddess of strategy

Severus was one of the Roman Emperors declared by the army. This element of his personal story is also present in the coinage of his age. The number of coins minted under his reign was increased because of some reforms to improve the military life. In fact, he promised to his loyal legions an increase in salary and a better quality of life. For this reason  a greater production of coins was needed. The symbolism related to the army was on several of these coins.

Eagle with open wings, symbol of Roman Army

Another key-element of coinage of Severus was his desire to make and promote his imperial dynasty as one of the most ancient ones. He celebrated his sons, Geta and Caracalla, and his second wife, Julia Domna.

Julia Domna, as a Roman woman and an Emperor’s wife, was represented as Roman Goddesses such as Venus, Juno, and Diana, but also as Pietas and Pudicitia, the deifications of important values such as chastity and respect for gods, nation and family.

Julia Domna as Pudicitia

Coins can be read as a book focusing on someone’s life, where the obverse is the title and the reverse is the chapter, condensed in one meaningful and allegoric image.

 Eufemia Iannetti (MA Leicester)

The Beau Street Hoard & The U3A: The Story So Far…

One of the activities in the Heritage Lottery funded Beau Street Hoard Project is photography of the hoard, by members of local U3A groups.

In order that the coins can be identified, they are first being accessioned in to the Roman Baths Museum collection. This includes individually packing each coin identified by the British Museum, and assigning it a unique number. As every one of the 17,577 coins in the hoard need an individual number, this is a somewhat daunting task, currently being carried out by a wide range of our collections volunteers (all 13 of them) and placements.

 All 775 coins from Bag 5 individually numbered and stored

Once individually packed and numbered, the next stage in the process is the photography and weighing of the coins. It is for this stage of work, which we have enlisted the help of U3A volunteers.

 U3A volunteers photographing and weighing the coins

In teams of three, they are photographing the coins; including the accession number, for identification purposes, the obverse (heads) side, and the reverse (tails) side. Along the way they are having, to get used to identifying the images on either side of the coin, so that each photograph accurately displays the coin.

Three images are taken for every coin

Once photographed, they are also weighing the coins, the recording of this information being crucial to identifying coins.

To date, 3229 coins have been photographed and weighed. This includes the entirety of Bags 5, 6, 7 and 8. The contents of these four bags are a good representation of coins from the hoard, denarii, radiates and debased radiates.

Bags 5 and 6 are the best examples of silver coins from the hoard, so they were nice coins to get the U3A started on, however, it wasn’t long before they had to move on to doing the considerably less shiny coins from Bags 7 and 8, and they are doing a sterling job in photography what are some rather nasty coins.

Some rather nasty coins from Bag 7

The rate at which the coins are being photographed and the speed at which the U3A volunteers are learning to recognise the reverses of coins has been unprecedented, and so work on Bag 2 has already started while we have other volunteers working through getting the rest of it numbered.

 Bag 2 all bagged up and waiting to be numbered

With work soon to recommence on getting the rest of the hoard identified at the British Museum, it hopefully won’t be long until we are working our way through the rest of the hoard too!

Verity

Matt’s Money Monday

Before the Event:

Money Mondays is one of many regular events that occur at the Roman Baths and are included in the wider Roman Baths Museum. This event particularly focuses on a different aspect of money each Monday.  

For my individual display, I chose to focus my attention to the Gods, Goddesses and Heroes who are depicted on Roman coinage. I realised I would be able to intertwine with The Beau Street Coin Hoard which the Roman Baths are currently cleaning (with the British Museum), recording, cataloguing, storing and displaying.

I wanted to exhibit selected deities found on a small number of the coins. This was done through an informative display and pairing activity. There was also opportunity to observe the coins through a magnifying glass.  

The display involved a lot of background preparation:

1.The selection of visually appropriate coins from the hoard.   

2.Creation of the correct display packaging for each coin.

3.Extensive background research, making sure all the information was relevant and accessible.

4. Writing the information displays in such a way that they had enough detailed information to educate people who were interested but they were easy to read for both English and Non-English speaking people.

5. The display had to be prepared in such a way as to be aesthetically pleasing as well as being informative and easy to understand.

6. Ensuring all the correct materials and equipment were at the right place at the right time in accordance with the event times.  

1

Discussing the detail on the coins

After the Event

The event was very successful, even though it was a fairly quiet evening, nearing 100 people came up to the display between 6pm - 8pm and actively engaged in conversation about the display and about the coin hoard and its current story.

It was a massive learning curve for me to see how displays and exhibitions are put together from the very beginning and just how much time and effort needs to go into them in order to make people engage and provide opportunities for them.

There were defiantly areas for improvement on the display, which were only realized once the display was setup (such as font/paragraph size and the grouping of texts and images). 

Examining the Roman Coin with Jupiter on the obverse.

Matthew Batchelor, Roman Society intern

The Hippo Camp!

The Beau Street Hoard features coins with all sorts of pictures on the back, including gods and goddesses, emperors and temples, and many different kinds of animals, both real and mythical. One of these mythical animals is the Hippocamp.

The Hippocamp is half-horse and half-fish, almost like an equine mermaid! The Roman god of the sea, Neptune, is often shown using Hippocampi to pull his chariot. We have a mosaic of a Hippocamp in the museum.

 

The Hippocamp Mosaic

 “Hippocamp” is actually a Greek word. “Hippo” means horse and “Kampos” means sea monster. We often translate it as “sea-horse”.  The Etruscans (a pre-Roman civilisation in Italy) had lots of mythical animals that were half-fish, including aigikampoi (fish-tailed goats), leokampoi (fish-tailed lions), taurokampoi (fish-tailed bulls) and pardalokampoi (fish-tailed leopards).

Of course, of all the animals featured on the coins, our favourite is the Hippo! This is why the mascot for the Heritage Lottery Funded Beau Street Hoard Project is Beau the Hippo. So we decided to create our own version of a Hippo Camp.

 

The Hippo-Camp - L-R: Phil, Gordo and Beau

As you can see, Beau and his friends, Phil and Gordo (named after Philip I and Gordian III, the most represented Emperors in the Hoard) are having a lovely time at the Hippo-Camp. This picture was drawn by our volunteer artist-extraordinaire. It looked like so much fun that even our stuffed animal Beau wanted a go!

 

The Re-Enacted Hippo-Camp (with Beau)

Meet Beau the Hippo!

Beau the hippo is our mascot for our Heritage Lottery Funded Beau Street Hoard Project.  But why a hippo?

Beau the hippo announcing the latest news of the Beau Street Hoard

When we saw the first coins from the Beau Street hoard, they were all uncleaned and some of them were quite corroded. Sifting through them, we were delighted to see a hippo, albeit a rather miserable looking one, on one of the reverses.

one of  the hippos on the coins

We fell in love with him and realised that a hippo, which is happiest wallowing in the mud and water, was appropriate for a Bath coin, having been excavated in the mud, and from Bath famous for its spring water.

The coin that features the hippo was issued by the Emperor Philip I in 248 AD. This year was the 1000^th anniversary of what the Romans considered to be the founding of Rome by Romulus.  As part of the anniversary celebrations many wild animals were transported to Rome to be killed in gladiatorial and wild beast hunts. Other animals represented on his coins include antelopes, wolves and lions. But the hippo coins actually have his wife, Otacilia’s head on the obverses; perhaps she liked the hippos best.

So with Beau we are remembering all the animals that died in the name of “entertainment”.

Beau dressed as a Roman soldier

Look out for Beau and some of his cousins at our Beau Street Hoard events over the next 15 months!  And if you meet a hippo be sure to take a photo and share it with us on Facebook!

A delft hippo giving scale to some of the coins from Bag 7 of the Hoard

To find out more about Beau and all our coin related events and activities follow us BeauStHoard on Flickr, Twitter: and Facebook

Susan

Latest Beau Street Hoard News

 Eureka! Finally our hard work has been rewarded. 

The good news from the Heritage Lottery Fund is that our Beau Street Hoard Project has been successful in attracting £372,500 of lottery funding. 

After cracking open the ginger beer (should have been ‘mulsum’, an alcoholic Roman tipple, but we were officially at work!), we had to get down to the serious business of buying the hoard. Stephen Clews, Manager of The Roman Baths and the project mastermind, quickly got on the phone to The Treasure Valuation Committee to get a receipt for the purchase of the coins to present to our grant giving bodies – The Heritage Lottery Fund, The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Purchase Fund and The Headley Trust. This enabled us to draw down our grants to buy the hoard.

 

Some of the coins from the hoard

   

After the coins had been purchased, we publicised the good news, far and wide. Our Communications and Media Officer issued a press release and the phone went red hot with requests for interviews, sound-bites and photo shoots. As the coins were discovered in central Bath, the story has elicited a lot of interest locally, but the story also captured the imagination of national and international press and media. Luckily, Stephen is a very eloquent and enthusiastic speaker, also not at all fazed by the paparazzi’s flashing bulbs and requests to ‘look this way please, Mr Clews’!

This application is the culmination of over a year’s worth of activity, with input from many people including colleagues, partners, consultees, volunteers and funders. Now we’ve been awarded the grant we will embark on our exciting community engagement activities, working with many local groups including The Girl Guide Association, the U3A (University of the Third Age), local school children, their parents and teachers, students and staff from Bath Spa University and Wiltshire College, Bath Festivals, The Genesis Trust, The Natural Theatre Company and others.

This month marks the official launch of the Beau Street Hoard community engagement programme which will run until July 2015, with many opportunities to get involved with exciting, coin-related events, including hands-on coin activities, designed to encourage people’s understanding and interest in archaeology and local heritage, drop-in workshops, mobile roadshows in locations across Bath and North East Somerset and beyond, new educational resources for young visitors, long-term projects with community partners and a range of public talks, presentations and symposia. There is something to interest everyone, from the casual visitor to the coin expert. One of the first events is ‘Curious Coins’, the first of many drop-in events at The Roman Baths, on 14 April (10am-1pm & 2pm-4pm) where visitors can investigate Roman coins and children can create a coin to take home.

For up to date details of all Beau Street Hoard events visit the Roman Baths website  or follow us on Twitter  flickr and Facebook

  

Saira – Beau Street Hoard Project Officer

National Science and Engineering Week 2014 highlights!

Another Science Week has been and gone! If you came along to one of our events, I hope you enjoyed it! Over the next few weeks, volunteers and placement students will be posting blogs on the tables they hosted during the week.

The 'week' (actually ten days!) kicked off on Saturday 14th March with the evening event we called "Great Minds Think Alike"! We had a number of tables scattered around the museum, including a few around the torchlit Great Bath (very atmospheric!).

Having fun at Bath Taps into Science!

Everyone seemed very interested in the tables, with the children especially loving the water experiments hosted by the BRLSI and the aqueduct model worked by Tom (one of our apprentices!).

Themes included: Astronomy, Roman glass, Roman wall paintings and a chance to see a human skeleton with an explanation of the injuries on the skeleton by a medic!

All the tables were inspired by aspects of The Roman Baths site and the ideas of Roman and Greek scholars- such as the astrolabe on the Gorgon's Head Pediment for the Astronomy table and the Syrian man's skeleton being the inspiration for the human skeleton table (both skeletons were found in the same area!).

Dressing up as Romans at the Brownie sleepover!

The Saturday evening welcomed around 50 Brownies who come to the Science event and then had a sleepover at the museum (this was the first Brownie sleepover we had as part of the Heritage Lottery funded Beau St. Hoard Project and I think it's safe to safe, it kicked it off to a good start!)

During the week, we had a table a day held by the Great Bath. Prehistoric flint tools and Roman medicine were a couple of the topics covered!

Me and Huw at his Thursday table on arches!

Our final event was 'Bath Taps into Science', a science fair held on Friday 21st and Sunday 23rd. We brought along our popular aqueducts model (a fully working one may I add) and our build-an-arch activity! Kids and adults alike had a lot of fun with both models, the last event definitely ended this years NSEW on a high!

Me on the 'Baths Taps ...' Sunday table!

Don't forget to keep an eye out more Science Week blogs. See you next year, I see good things for NSEW 2015!

Emma

Let the Games Begin

If you ask a child today how they occupied their free time, most answers would be – playing on some type of gaming console, watching the Telly, or being outside playing some sort of sport with their mates.

Unfortunately Romans didn’t have these types of option available to them. While there is the possibility to have an outside sport like game (using a ball) during the Roman period, it was more likely you would catch a child with some sort of board game or a nut (marble) game.

The first game, entitled Orca, allows each play to have 5 nuts that they take turns to try and throw them into a bucket. The winner is determined by which ever player gets the most nuts of their original 5 into the bucket. The name Orca is a Latin term that means whale, which in this game the whale (or to be specific its mouth) is represented by the bucket.

The next game is called Delta. Delta is a Greek letter that is in the shape of a triangle (Δ). Delta also is a triangle deposit at the mouth of a river. So it is not surprising that the Delta Game Roman children played involves nuts (again) being thrown onto a triangle on the ground. The triangle is divided into 10 sections and after each child has thrown all 5 nuts, they count up their scores.

Additionally there is the Rolling Walnut Game where competitors start with 10 nuts, and roll them down a slope one at a time in an attempt to hit their opponent’s nut, which they then get to keep. The player with the most nuts wins.

Finally there is Castellatae. This begins with five small clusters of nuts (3 walnuts and 1 on top). Each player has 5 nuts and tries with five throw to disturb the nut clusters. The units he/she has managed to hit are theirs to keep. After that the clusters are reconstructed from a ‘large’ pot and the next player tries in turn. Whoever has the most nuts after 5 rounds is the winner.

These are only some games that Roman Children would play, if you are in the Bath area tonight and fancy learning about these and other games, visit the Roman Baths Museum between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm tonight, 10 July 2013, at the Great Bath where Bethan will be there explaining more games and leisure activities that the Romans participated in.

Additionally you can see these Roman games in action on 15th July 2013 at 1:30pm, on the Kingston Parade during the Beau Street Hoard Funding launch. The children playing the games have been working with the Learning & Programmes co-ordinator to learn these games and create their interpretation of Roman Coins for the event

Otter Class from Moorlands School painting their coins

Along with these games, there will be an actual Roman Priest and Roman Soldier along with our modern day Roman Gladiators – two of the Bath Rugby players



Bath Rugby's Olly Woodburn



Bath Rugby's Ben Williams









If you are in Bath and want to witness this amazing event, stop by – it is free to all and donations for the Beau Street Hoard are welcomed!

-Jenn