The rare early medieval gold panel found near Pocklington has finally returned home after it was delivered to Pocklington District Heritage Trust trustee, Alex Harvey, this week.
The handover was the culmination of six months of concerted efforts by the trust to secure the gold and garnet piece after being ruled in January as too important to be allowed to leave the country.
Pictured left: PDHT trustee Alex Harvey receives the Pocela Panel from Spinks of London who conducted the auction sale.
Following its discovery by a local metal detectorist in 2013, the panel was officially declared as treasure, but its offer to museums at that time was not taken up. When the piece came to auction last September, the winning bid was by a foreign collector, with the government then imposing a temporary export bar to give British institutions a two-month window to raise the asking price to keep it in the country.
That gave the local heritage trust an opportunity to make the 1,400-year-old panel a prize exhibit in its planned museum in Burnby Hall. A crowd funding appeal was quickly successful, raising the required £4,000 in just two weeks, with generous donors from a wide area keen to save it for the nation and allow it to be publicly displayed for the first time.
There were still major negotiations needed between the heritage trust, the Department of Culture, Media & Sport, other museums and Arts Council England, before the Pocklington bid was recognised then accepted. But everything finally came together on Friday when London auctioneers, Spink, brought the piece to York and presented it to the trust’s representatives.
Imposing the export bar back in January, Arts Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, commented: “This beautiful panel potentially holds information into how the Medieval kingdoms of this country interacted and co-existed. I hope a UK buyer can be found so it can be studied further and its stories can be shared with the public.”
The heritage trust has named the piece The Pocela Panel after the semi-legendary ‘Pocela’, who may have given Pocklington its name around (c. 600-670) , when the intricate piece was created using Continental gold plus garnets from South Asia.
And the trust has already taken up the government’s challenge to undertake more research; with early medieval archaeologist and author, Alex Harvey, who also works at the Yorkshire Museum, pulling together further findings about the era. His research will focus on other East Yorkshire discoveries, overseas links with Merovingian France, and the national and international context of the Pocela Panel’s workmanship; in order to reveal more information about it and the wider context of early medieval Pocklington.
The GoFundMe fundraiser is still open for donations with any surplus going towards the setup of a new museum in Pocklington to house the local artefacts.
