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The Migdale Hoard returns to the Highlands, for a short while
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Submitted by PaulM on Saturday, 24 January 2004 Page Views: 3350
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 More than 100 years after it was discovered by workmen blasting a granite knoll near Bonar Bridge, the Migdale Hoard - a priceless collection of early Bronze Age jewellery - has been returned to the Highlands for temporary public display. Dating from about 2000BC, the artefacts are in the custody of the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh.
But, neatly coinciding with Sunday's television coverage of the hoard by Tony Robinson's Time Team on Channel 4, they have loaned the collection to Inverness Museum where it can be seen on the ground floor until mid-June.
Several local people featured in Sunday's programme, recorded last spring, including landowner Cara Flanagan, crofter Sandy Chisholm and local history enthusiast Marion Fraser, who remembered being shown as a child where the hoard had been discovered above Loch Migdale and was able to point the Time Team in the right direction.
Sadly, The Northern Times's original report of the find in May 1900 has been torn from our files, although a later paragraph under Bonar Bridge news hints tantalisingly that the treasure trove carried off to Edinburgh was incomplete. A number of smaller artefacts, we reported, had probably been pocketed by local children.
Where are they now? The archaeologists would love to know!
The first detailed account of the find was given in a presentation to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by Andrew Carnegie, who owned Skibo Estate at the time.
The Migdale Hoard includes a bronze axe head, bronze hair ornaments, sets of bronze bangles and anklets, and a series of beautifully carved jet and shale buttons that may well have adorned a Bronze Age jacket.
The axe head is unusual in having a tinned surface, suggesting it was an article of value and prestige rather than an everyday tool.
The bangles and anklets are of solid bronze and beautifully decorated. Around 40 beads were found in the hoard, made of sheet bronze wrapped round a willow core, of a type common in central Europe at the time.
Of the six buttons in the collection, one is made from jet, probably from Whitby in Yorkshire, and the others from cannel coal of the kind later mined at Brora.
The objects date from around 4000 years ago, when bronze was first being worked in Britain, and are likely to have belonged to one person - a local VIP of great wealth and power who buried them as a gift to the gods.
At Inverness Museum on Tuesday as the exhibits were prepared for display was Highland Council convener Alison Magee, whose Central Sutherland ward includes Bonar Bridge.
"A s local Highland Councillor for Migdale, I'm delighted that these highly important artefacts will be on display in the Highlands close to where they were found, " she said. "I hope as many people as possible from the Kyle of Sutherland and the wider Highlands will be able to visit the museum and see for themselves this stunning example of our local Bronze Age history."
Patricia Weeks, archaeologist at Inverness Museum, was intrigued by the possibility that, even after 100 years, some items from the original Migdale Hoard might still be lying in attics or on mantlepieces in the Bonar Bridge area.
"Intriguingly, some of the pieces found with the hoard never made it to the National Museum, " she said. "If anyone knows of their whereabouts, they should contact their local museum. Under treasure trove law, they should be reported and it is possible that a reward may still be due even after all these years."
A talk on the Migdale Hoard will be given somewhere in the Highlands later in the year by Dr Alison Sheridan of the National Museums of Scotland. The date and place have still to be confirmed, but Alison Magee has assured them the turnout in Bonar Bridge would make the trip to Sutherland worthwhile..
Source: The Northern Times 24/01/2004
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