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A 'Magical' Mirror the Powerful Queen of a British Tribe May Have Used Was Discovered in an Enormous Iron Age Hoard, Now on Display
Key takeaways
- Researchers from Durham University excavated some 800 iron and copper-alloy artifacts at the site—including 2,000-year-old horse bridle bits, a feasting cauldron and a mirror signifying female power.
- “Finding a hoard or collection of 10 objects is unusual, it’s exciting, but finding something of this scale is just unprecedented,” Tom Moore, Durham’s head of archaeology, told the Guardian’s Mark Brown in 2025.
- Nicknamed the Melsonby Hoard, after the nearby Yorkshire village, the trove is the largest collection of Iron Age metalwork ever found in the United Kingdom.
The hoard is on display at the Yorkshire Museum Anthony Chappel-Ross / York Museums Trust Five years ago, a metal detectorist scanning a field in northern England hit on some ancient-looking metal, and he alerted archaeologists. Researchers from Durham University excavated some 800 iron and copper-alloy artifacts at the site—including 2,000-year-old horse bridle bits, a feasting cauldron and a mirror signifying female power.
“Finding a hoard or collection of 10 objects is unusual, it’s exciting, but finding something of this scale is just unprecedented,” Tom Moore, Durham’s head of archaeology, told the Guardian’s Mark Brown in 2025. “We were just lost for words.”
Nicknamed the Melsonby Hoard, after the nearby Yorkshire village, the trove is the largest collection of Iron Age metalwork ever found in the United Kingdom. Now, after years of preliminary research, it’s going on public display for the first time. “Chariots, Treasure and Power: Secrets of the Melsonby Hoard” at the Yorkshire Museum gives visitors a peek into what life was like during Britain’s age of tribes.