Historic coins go on display at Barrow museum (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Historic coins go on display at Barrow museum

6:00pm Wednesday 13th February 2013 in News

HISTORIC coins dug up in Furness have gone on display at a new archaeological gallery in Barrow-in-Furness – and hundreds of people turned out at the weekend to see them.

The Stone Age, Blood Axe, Conquest Gallery, which opened at the Dock Museum, features an array of relics found in Cumbria spanning the last 12,000 years.

But the star of the show is the Viking hoard of 92 silver coins and artefacts found by an amateur metal detectorist at Stainton, near Dalton-in-Furness, in 2011.

They were temporarily put on display in 2012 when the museum used the rare coins to help raise £49,500 needed to keep them in Cumbria.

But the new gallery provides a permanent home for the 1,000-year-old coins.

Sabine Skae, collections and exhibitions manager at the museum, said: “The gallery takes visitors on a sweep of history starting 12,000 years ago.

“The hoard was a really exciting discovery for the area and it’s great to have it in a permanent display to help visitors understand more about the history of Vikings in Cumbria.”

The exhibition also has a miniature longboat, lifesize models of Vikings, a Bronze age skull and tools found in caves in the South Lakes.