Can we have our axe back?

A story of archaeological skullduggery in the middle of the nineteenth century involving the curate of St Leonard’s at Walton-le-Dale and a valuable Bronze Age axe was told in the volumes of the Lancashire Archaeological Bulletin mentioned in an earlier post.

The skullduggery involved the substitution of an inferior specimen for the one that was sent away to London for identification: the valuable item was retained and the substitute returned. Charles Hardwick, Preston’s first archaeologist, was aware of the substitution when he published his History of Preston in 1857:

‘About fifteen years ago, a very superior bronze celt or axe, and a spear head of similar metal, were found at Cuerdale, by Mr. Richardson, the late tenant of the estate, while making a deep drain in what he termed the “cars or red water land.” This celt was forwarded to London for the inspection of some archaeological society, and a common one of the form of fig. 6, plate I, returned in its stead. It is probably of British manufacture.’

That was more or less the last that was heard about the incident until Ben Edwards, the former county archaeologist, returned to the issue in one the bulletins that he and his wife published. He was trying to sort out the confused identification of objects found at Cuerdale and now held by the Harris Museum.

Ben adds the information that the axe was found in the same field as the Cuerdale hoard, just 380 yards away, and he credits Mr Richardson as the man who saved and kept together the hoard of Viking silver.

The next issue of the Edwards’ bulletin brought more clarification from Stephen Penney, who identified the archaeological society that Hardwick mentioned as the British Archaeological Association, and pinned the blame for the substitution of the axes on the Rev Thomas Hugo.

The Rev Hugo exhibited the bronze axe and other finds from Cuerdale at a meeting of the association in 1852 and wrote an article on the finds for its journal, titled ‘On the Field of Cuerdale’.

Stephen commented:

‘A fact which seems to be little known in Lancashire is that this Cuerdale axe is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (acc. no 1927, 2638) where it was presented by the Reverend Mr. Hugo. It would seem that this ardent collector, who incidentally became curate of the parish in which Cuerdale is situated [St Leonard’s] in 1842, retained possession of the axe and saw to its replacement in Preston with another, not dissimilar, implement of undisclosed provenance.

‘Hardwick’s description of the replacement axe as “a common one of the form of fig. 6, plate I” (the Walton-le-Dale axe) need not suggest that it, too, was plain, but may merely indicate that both axes were of a similar shape and size. Whilst both original and replacement are of the three ribbed Yorkshire type, the “Cuerdale” axe which is now in Preston Museum (A. 136) does not bear close comparison with Hugo’s illustration of the Cuerdale implement; in contrast the axe in the Ashmolean does.

‘The Cuerdale axe came to the Ashmolean as part of a small collection of antiquities which the Reverend Mr Hugo had amassed from a variety of sources.’

Should the Harris Museum now ask the Ashmolean Museum to return the axe?