One Precious Ring: The Vyne’s cursed treasure

National Trust houses are filled with treasures, but not all can be displayed at one time. Take this ring, not currently on show, which lies in the collection at The Vyne, a fine Tudor house. Thought to be fourth-century, it is made of 12g of gold and comes with an intriguing tale. It was discovered in 1785 by a farmer in a field at Silchester (the Roman town Calleva Atrebatum), in Hampshire, not far from The Vyne. No one knows how the ring came to the house, but there it has stayed.

Moving on to the early 19th century, and, 100 miles away, at Lydney in Gloucestershire (once the site of a Roman temple), a small leaden tablet, also from the fourth century, was found. On it was engraved a curse imprecating woe on the person – one Senicianus – who had taken this very ring. The curse named the owner of the ring as Silvianus, and in the text he called upon the god Nodens, a Celtic deity adopted by the Romans, for help.

In the 1920s the archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler was directing excavations at Lydney. Aware of the tablet (now in private hands) and its connection to the ring, he asked JRR Tolkien, scholar of Old and Middle English at Oxford, to look into ‘Nodens’. ‘Did Tolkien see the ring?’ asks Dominique Shembry, house steward at The Vyne. ‘We can’t be sure, but he was clearly aware of its connection to the tablet and its curse.’

The ring comes with unanswered questions. It is engraved with a primitive face and the word ‘VENVS’ is inscribed on the reverse. But is it Venus? ‘It could be a lion’s head,’ Dominique explains, ‘or the profile of a Celtic tribal chief, wearing a headband of feathers, or perhaps boar’s bristles, which were a symbol of fertility and strength. The ring is large, a modern size T, so it must have been worn on the thumb, or over a glove.’

What is known is that the curse clearly failed: Silvianus never had his piece returned. Yet the tale of a ring and a curse, thanks to Tolkien, lives on.

The Vyne, Hampshire: nationaltrust.org.uk/thevyne The house just fully reopened, after a £5.4m roof project, with new offerings, including an immersive audiovisual experience about the rare Soho tapestries being restored off-site. The team hopes to display the ring again in the future. 

Images © The Vyne