Medieval Treasures To Go On Show At Wrexham Museum

A hoard of medieval treasures is set to go on show at Wrexham County Borough Museum & Archives this weekend.

Most people have a hazy idea of what life was like in the Middle Ages, but apart from castles, what else remains of Wales’s medieval past? If you have ever asked yourself this question, you will find some of the answers in this exhibition.

Amongst the artefacts on show at the Medieval Minds exhibition in gallery 2 will be the Wrexham Hoard, a collection of silver pennies from the reigns of Richard the Lionheart, John (the king who signed the Magna Carta) and Henry III.

The coins were found inside a jug buried in a grassy bank in 1926 and this is the first time they have been on public display in Wrexham since their discovery was made public in 1969.

Also on show will be two inscribed slates discovered at Strata Florida Abbey in mid-Wales, one with the faint medieval scribblings of a poem in Welsh and the other marked with notes made by a fifteenth-century rent collector while taking payments from the tenants of the abbey.

Another attraction is a holy water bottle, known as an ampulla, which is decorated with imagery connected to the martyrdom of Thomas Becket.

Medieval Minds explores several key themes of medieval life through archaeological finds and manuscripts. Together these objects and documents tell the stories of knights and battles, saints and shrines, money, Welsh law, tools and trade and domestic life.

The exhibition opens on January 21st and will be open until June 30th.

Wrexham County Borough Museum & Archives is open Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm and Saturday 10.30am – 3pm. Admission is free.