Laid out in the British Museum like a ruler, the Bayeux Tapestry tells its story with relentless, graphic mastery. Harold sails to Normandy and back. He breaks his promise to support William’s claim to the English throne. The Norman duke invades England. Trees are hewed into ships. Weapons are loaded. Armies meet near Hastings. Horses circle, then gallop, then fall (the artistry in those horses!). Men are massacred. King Harold dies. And so…
The tapestry’s last bit is missing. Even the fleeing English look suspiciously like recent patching. It’s a let down that would have frustrated the great work’s creators, who, one guesses, sealed their narrative with a victory feast and a coronation. King William in state, just as the story opened with King Edward.
Instead, the museum offers its own climax.
If you are able to see the tapestry, turn round when you reach the end, and look at a lone, tall case. Inside, shining out of the darkness, is a pile of silver coins. So many – 2,584, weighing 3.4 kg – that when they were assessed in 2024, the collection became the highest-value find ever recorded under the Treasure Act: £4.3 million.
The hoard, found by a group of friends with metal detectors in the Chew Valley, Somerset, was buried a year or so after 1066. One of the coins was minted by King Edward, he who opens the tapestry. All the others feature Harold or William, gathered up as booty oblivious to defeat or victory. These coins tell a different story from the tapestry’s. Not of simple conquest, but of rivalries and insurrections, of houses burned down and earls murdered, of battles and rebellions. Of an unknown person or people who felt, in the circumstances, that the only safe place for their wealth was underground.
