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Monday, 11th May 2009 (1089 views)

The 'first Crown Jewels' in Britain, which include a number of gold items, need to be securely protected if they are placed on display, museum officials launching a plea for funding have claimed.

Discovered in the 4,000-year-old grave of a chieftain, the hoard is going to be placed on permanent display at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum at Devizes, having been held in a bank vault for three decades, according to the Daily Mail.

The burial place is known as Bush Barrow and lies near Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

Museum director David Dawson told the news source: "It's a leap of faith, but it's not impossible that Bush Barrow was the burial place of the person who had Stonehenge built."

Officials are now appealing for £500,000 in order to create a secure Bronze Age gallery for the treasures that will be created in an existing display on the ground floor.

The finely crafted items unearthed in the grave date from the Bronze Age - around 1800 BC - and include a dagger decorated with over 140,000 gold rivets, a gold belt buckle and a gold breast-plate in the shape of a lozenge featuring carved patterns.

 

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