What are we doing with all those coins?

What are we doing with all those coins?

Hello!  My name is Katie and I’m the new Beau Street Hoard Project Officer.  I’ve had a delightful time the last two weeks getting to know about the project and meeting all the friendly and knowledgeable staff and volunteers involved.  I feel most welcome.  I love the Roman Baths and been volunteering here for a while.  I can’t believe my luck to be working here!

Now, my title is Project Officer, but it should probably really be PROJECTS Officer; to celebrate the discovery and acquisition of the Hoard the Roman Baths are running 33 in projects total!  We are running public events like talks, roadshows, and drop-in conservation evenings, providing training for volunteers, students and staff, organising a 2 day conference, having Brownie sleepovers, publishing two books, working with local schools – the list goes on!

Speaking of events, we had our first conservation evening last Saturday here at the Roman Baths.  It was really interesting meeting the conservators from the British Museum and learning about the work they are doing conserving all those 17,577 Roman coins. They showed our visitors (and me) what takes to turn a solid dirty fused lump into thousands of lovely shiny separate coins.

One part of the corroded mass of Roman coins that made up the Beau Street Hoard.  How do you think the conservators dealt with it?

They’ll be back again on 28^th October as part of Heritage Open Week, so if you missed last Saturday’s event, do try and come in October!

For the evening I put together a display on all the different projects were doing with the Beau Street Hoard.  It’s huge! I’ve got a lot of work to do!  And I’m really looking forward to it. 

You can find out more about Beau Street Hoard activities through our website www.romanbaths.co.uk, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

 Me with my display.

Katie Scaife