Celebrating the centenary of the Heberden Coin Room
From ornate coins of the Iceni to the coronation medal of a boy king, discover six recent gifts helping to illuminate the fascinating world of numismatics.
Since its public opening on 24 October 1922, the Ashmolean Museum’s Heberden Coin Room has grown to become one of the world’s leading coin cabinets. The original collection of 60,000 coins and medals has expanded significantly and the coin room now houses some 300,000 items, including paper money, tokens, jettons and commemorative art medals.
Generous donations have played a crucial role in supporting the work of the Heberden Coin Room over the years: they have underpinned the growth of the collections and their display and digitisation, as well as ambitious research projects, visiting scholar programmes and public events.
To celebrate the centenary, we’re taking a closer look at six recent gifts that are helping to bring the world of numismatics to life for students, scholars and members of the public around the globe.
Did you know? The opening of the coin room was the culmination of a forty-year campaign, finally enabled by a bequest of £1,000 from Charles Heberden, Principal of Brasenose College. He had left the money for any University purpose and so had no idea that he was helping to found a coin room!
1. Revealing new details about life in the Late Iron Age
An exquisite collection of more than 1,000 coins was donated to the Ashmolean Museum earlier this year by collector and scholar Dr John Talbot, under the Arts Council’s Cultural Gifts Scheme. The collection contains ornately designed gold and silver coins minted by the Iceni, an Iron Age community that inhabited present-day East Anglia — perhaps best known for their famous ‘queen’ Boadicea.
The coins preserve the earliest writing by the Iceni and bear captivating and intricate imagery depicting a wide range of motifs, from wolves and prancing horses to spiky-haired boars and hidden faces. These speak of many key aspects of Iron Age life: art and iconography; tribal identities; and the changing nature of kingship.
Dr Talbot’s donation will have a major impact on the Ashmolean’s Iron Age coin collection. It includes every known type of Icenian coin (in many cases the finest known example) and will nearly double the number of so-called ‘Celtic’ coins held by the museum. With much information still to be extracted, it promises to be an extraordinary new resource for those interested in Late Iron Age Britain and the culture of the Iceni.
‘The coins promise to reveal a new understanding of early British history for future historians and museum visitors’
— Professor Chris Howgego, Keeper of the Heberden Coin Room.
2. Securing the future of Greek numismatics at the museum
The Ashmolean’s Greek coin collection contains approximately 40,000 coins and covers all areas of the Greek world, from Spain through to ancient Bactria. It is considered the fifth most important collection of its kind in the world, and includes archaic, classical, Hellenistic and Greek imperial (Roman provincial) specimens.
The collection falls under the care of the museum’s Curator of Greek and Roman Provincial Coins, currently Dr Volker Heuchert. As well as playing a crucial role in the teaching of Greek numismatics (which dates back to the 1880s at Oxford), the curator also works to ensure the coins are accessible to a wider audience, including through exhibitions, publication and digitisation.
Thanks to a generous anonymous donation the future of the curatorship has now been secured through endowment. This will ensure that the Ashmolean remains a vibrant international hub for the study of Greek coins, and that it continues to expand the subject through leading research and by encouraging interest among younger generations.
3. Acquiring a national treasure
Towards the end of 2021 the Heberden Coin Room acquired a remarkable coronation medal made for the accession of nine-year-old Edward VI, following the death of his father King Henry VIII in 1547. It was engraved by Henry Basse, chief engraver at the Tower Mint, and features an intricate portrait of Edward in armour with insignia. Text highlighting Edward’s temporal and spiritual powers and his young age appears in Latin, and again in Hebrew and Greek on the reverse.
The quality of the medal indicates that it was part of the original production, struck in silver at the Tower of London for the occasion of the ceremony, and not one of the many later re-strikes or re-casts. The same can only be said for one other specimen — now in St Petersburg — and so in this sense the museum has undoubtedly been able to acquire a national treasure.
This fantastic acquisition was made possible through the support of the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Art Fund, the generosity of Richard and Gabrielle Falkiner and an anonymous donation in the memory of Professor D M Metcalf.
4. Sharing the joy of Roman provincial coinage
The Ashmolean Museum’s Roman Provincial Coinage (RPC) project is one of the most important research projects in numismatics, generating invaluable information about how the Roman Empire established power and governed — and how the provinces responded. RPC online currently features more than 400,000 coins from 70,000 types, and draws in several million views each year, proving its impact beyond academia.
To help the project achieve even more the Ashmolean launched a fundraising appeal earlier this year, so far raising over £30,000 to underpin its ambitious work and enable it to share the joy of Roman provincial coins with an even wider audience.
5. Supporting the online publication of the entire coin collection
A generous gift from the Swire Charitable Trust is enabling the Ashmolean Museum to continue its crucial work to digitise and make available online its internationally important coin collection.
Earlier this year the trust extended its support for the Heberden Coin Room’s Coin Digitisation Assistant for a further five years — a move that will lead to a significant increase in the number of fully described coins available on the museum’s online numismatic platform. Images and data on the platform are freely available to all, and play an important role in numismatic research, teaching and public engagement around the world.
This gift builds on the support of the Ronus Foundation, which sponsored the initial creation of the online platform and has subsequently funded the digitisation of Early Modern coinage.
6. Sharing knowledge of later European prehistory
Later European prehistory research and promotion at the Ashmolean has received a major boost following recent gifts from Mr Timothy Wright and Dr John Talbot. Together they are supporting the work of Dr Courtney Nimura, the museum’s first Curator of Later European Prehistory, by extending her post until 2026.
Since taking up the role earlier this year Dr Nimura has been the force behind the recording and display of the newly acquired collection of Iceni coins (mentioned earlier), project managed a ground-breaking online numismatic exhibition and brought hundreds of people into the museum to celebrate the Festival of Archaeology.
The extension of the curatorship will enable Dr Nimura to progress her plans to create dynamic programmes of activity, digitise the museum’s Iron Age coin collection and secure the future of the Celtic Coin Index, which holds nearly 85,000 records of around 68,000 specimens of Iron Age coins.
Discover more…
Find out more about the history of the Heberden Coin Room, trace its global collection through an interactive timeline and discover fascinating coin and currency stories on the Ashmolean Museum website.
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