The Alfred Jewel comes home: Sue Purkiss

The Alfred Jewel

There is great excitement in Somerset at the moment (no, it's true; in the hills and on the levels, they speak of little else!) because for just one month, a great treasure has come home. It's the Alfred Jewel, and it must be one of the most exquisite works of art ever to have been found in a field after having been lost for centuries.

It's surprisingly small - a mere 6.4 cm long. It consists of an enamelled picture of a man who holds a flowering plant in each hand. This image is set under a piece of rock crystal, which is encased in the most exquisitely chased gold setting. It's shaped like a tear drop, and the apex of this is 'carved' into an animal's head - maybe a boar or a dragon? - in whose jaws is an empty socket. The gold back plate is engraved  with a stylised plant design, while the reverse of the animal head is patterned with overlapping scales.

And very significantly, there is an inscription, worked into the framework in open letterwork. It says: AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN - 'Alfred ordered me to be made.'

The Alfred in question was almost certainly Alfred the Great - so this jewel is a direct link with him. We know this because it was found on the Somerset Levels in 1693, in a field near North Petherton, only a few miles from Athelney, where Alfred fled in 878 from the Viking leader Guthrum - and from which he emerged to fight a decisive battle at Edington. After this, for the rest of his reign Alfred had the upper hand, and so was able to get on with rebuilding Wessex and making life better for his people. He later founded a monastery at Athelney.

No-one knows for certain what the purpose of the jewel was. But that socket looks as if it was made as an attachment to something. Perhaps it was fixed onto a crown - but the smart money is on the theory that this was an aestel - a pointer: used to follow the writing in a book. It is known that Alfred gave copies of Pope Gregory's 9th century best-seller Pastoral Care to bishoprics throughout his kingdom, and that with each book he sent a precious aestel. Perhaps this was the one he gave to Athelney.

Who was the man in the picture? It has been suggested it's Alfred himself. This doesn't seem likely to me. So far as I know, there wasn't a tradition of portraiture at the time - and if you were going to make a portrait, there would be easier media to use than enamel. Perhaps it's a saint - we don't know. More questions: how and when was it lost? How did it survive, under the surface of a field, without harm, for hundreds of years? If it had been found today, the site would have been minutely investigated for clues - but of course none of that happened in the 17th century.

What did happen was that the jewel was given to the University of Oxford in 1718 by the antiquarian Thomas Palmer, the son of Nathaniel, who had been the owner of the land where the jewel was found. Not long after that, it was given to the Ashmolean Museum, and there it's been ever since.

The Ashmolean, which opened in 1683, was the first university museum in the world, and it was built to house the 'Cabinet of Curiosities' of Elias Ashmole. Philippa Gregory has a very interesting account of its founding in her novel Virgin Earth (which, by the way, along with its predecessor, Earthly Joys, is a really excellent read), which concerns the fortunes pf plant collectors and explorers John Tradescant and his son. She suggests that the core of the collection was that of the Tradescants, which had been tricked out of them by Ashmole. Whatever the truth of that - and the Tradescants' collection was certainly the foundation of Ashmole's - the Ashmolean was and is a treasure trove. I went there to see the Alfred Jewel some years ago, when I was researching my novel about Alfred, Warrior King. It took me ages to find it, and eventually I spotted it tucked a way in a dim corner of a crowded display case.

But since then the Ashmolean has been re-fashioned into a glorious space, and the Alfred Jewel, far from being hidden away, is a striking focal point with a display case that sets it off beautifully.

Only not this month, because we've got it - it's only on loan, but for these few weeks, it's home.

I went to see it the other day, and I marvelled over how tiny it is. How on earth could the maker even see to create such exquisite detail? And just to think, that Alfred (I have to admit, I think of him as 'my Alfred') actually held this in his hand! (Because I'm sure he did. He ordered it to be made, so he would certainly have inspected it when it was done.)

Seeing the Jewel was the purpose of my visit, but I can't finish without a word about the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. Like the Ashmolean, it has been recently remodelled, and it's gorgeous. In fact, it's so gorgeous that it deserves more than a skimpy paragraph. So on second thoughts, I'll give it a post of its own next month. When the Alfred Jewel will have left us again, and we will be bereft...

Five Favourite Museums: by Sue Purkiss

Of course, I don't believe in astrology. Our lives ruled by spinning balls of matter light years away? Utter nonsense, of course. But there is one Libran trait that I undeniably have in spades: the ability - no, the compulsion - to see both sides of everything. This means that choosing anything takes ages - a coat, for instance: " Shall I have the teal blue? Or would grey be better? And a flared one or a straight one? Or should I not get either of those, should I...?" It wastes so much time. So I'm experimenting at the moment with choosing according to the first thought that pops into my head.

So when I thought of doing a little round-up of museums-I-have-loved for this month's post, my first instinct was to make a spider chart of all the leading contenders, note down their plus points etc etc. But in the interests of my new policy of under rather than over-thinking, I decided instead just to see which ones floated, all by themselves, to the top of that murky cauldron that is my brain. And here they are.

D H Lawrence's Birthplace, at Eastwood in Nottinghamshire

I think this was what actually started me thinking about museums the other day; somewhere or other I read that the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Sons and Lovers is coming up. I come from a town not far from Eastwood, where Lawrence was born and brought up. It's a mining town, not very pretty: not an easy place. My dad lived in a similar terraced house when he was a child, so I was very interested to go and see what it would have looked like inside. My father was one of six; how could they all have fitted intoi a two-bedroomed house? 

Well, it didn't really answer that question - but it did show what the house would have been like. It was easy to imagine Mrs Morel, trying to keep up her standards with her bits and pieces of Nottingham lace and her framed pictures and the inevitable aspidistra. Easy also to imagine how Lawrence came to feel hemmed in and claustrophobic, so that he would eventually seek out the clear light and wider spaces of Cornwall, Italy and Mexico. If you want to understand Lawrence - and I suspect his time is about to come around again - then Eastwood is a good place to start.


Musee de la Resistance, near Brioude, in the Auvergne

(Sorry for the lack of accents - I don't know how to do them in Blogger.) This is a small,

locally run museum which we visited some years ago while on holiday in the Auvergne. There are other more glamorous resistance museums, but there was something intensely visceral about this one. It was on the first floor, above a garage, maybe, or a shop. On the walls was a handwritten account of the war, and beneath are glass cases crammed with documents from the village - inert pieces of paper which were full of drama: a letter, for instance, from a woman who wrote to the authorities denouncing members of the resistance: after the war, she was shot. There were photographs of men who were captured and deported or shot, and letters - the last words their families had from them. That woman - perhaps her descendants still live in the village, alongside those of the men she sent to their deaths? And she wasn't the only collaborator. A disturbing museum to visit, but again, one that left you with a strong sense of connection to the time and place it commemorated.


Museum of Somerset, Taunton

This is very different: a recently refurbished museum in Taunton Castle, full of marvellous things, including this beautifully carved dead tree. Upstairs there is a turret room with quotes on the walls about Somerset done in exquisite calligraphy, and when I was there a while ago there was an audio visual display as you went up the stairs of the starling murmurations that you can see on the levels in winter. You get a real sense here of the sweep of history and of landscape.

National Portrait Gallery

This is one of my favourite places to go to in London. It's not actually a museum, of course,

but it fulfills some of the functions of one: how else can you get so close to people of the past? Go to one room and you can immerse yourself in the court of Elizabeth 1: to another and there is Thomas More, hero of A Man For All Seasons, villain of Wolf Hall. Gaze at this representation of him with his family, painted by someone who stood in front of him and spoke to him, and see what you think of the man. 

There's so much to see here, and always something different. There's also a fantastic range of postcards which are great for workshops about character.


ss Great Britain

And finally, the beautiful ship, now permanently moored in Bristol. This has been

painstakingly and lovingly restored; when it first arrived it was just a rusty shell, but now as you walk through it you can see clearly the contrast between a first class cabin and what life was like in steerage. The picture shows the galley. An accompanying exhibition space has much more information, and also diaries and letters from passengers, and the chance to dress up as a Victorian. This is a joy of a museum to visit; children love it too, particularly, believe it or not, the cabin with the talking toilet.  

It was after visiting the ship that I wrote my book for children, Emily's Surprising Voyage, about two children from very different backgrounds who meet on board ship as they set sail for Australia. 

So what would you say is your favourite museum? (Or, well, one of them... No pressure!)