Medieval Roundel — A Thames Foreshore Surprise.

Queenhithe Dock, City of London

Some years ago, I lived in London and in addition to being a hopeless detecting addict, I was also an avid Thames Mudlark. I specialised in searching the City stretches, and on these the most scoured areas of all, I never used a metal detector once. 

My sport there was strictly 'eyes only'. 

I guess I just loved beating tide, time and waiting for no man.

Everything but the seashells there were the ruined works of mankind. And that included my swanky West-End boots...

One of the key rules of 'eyes-only' searching is that you must investigate anything remotely interesting... 

Well, I was at Queenhithe Dock one day, and was chasing the tideline down as the water fell....

When,...

I saw in the mud and shingle, what looked like a unusually large iron washer! 

And of course, it was remotely interesting. 

And so I flipped it over... 

Diameter 53.7mm — thickness 7mm. The bright colour of the brass is known as 'Thames gilding'. It is not gilt though. The appearance is formed during a very long period of burial within a sealed matrix of oxygen free mud. Without oxygen (quickly used up entirely by microbes) oxidation, and therefore corrosion, cannot occur.

Mother! This was no washer!

It was pretty sizeable and quite heavy too. The metals were in an excellent state of preservation but unfortunately was crushed and mangled. 

Of Late-Medieval edging into early Post-Medieval date, no doubt.

Henry VIII...  

However, when I'd given it a tideline wash and examined the piece more closely I could see that it was work of the highest quality imaginable, was made by a very skilled craftsman indeed and would have cost a pretty penny to its long deceased owner. 

The face of the piece is formed from a single sheet of extremely thin brass. So very thin is it that I cannot accurately measure — but it is around the 0.2 mm mark and certainly no thicker. The backplate is a comparatively thick piece of slightly dished iron. 2mm thick perhaps. The techniques used in its creation were repoussé, chasing and embossing. Repoussé is the hammering of metal up from behind — chasing and embossing hammering down from the front. 

Expertly done the results can be astonishing. 

The design is not a Tudor rose, though it has some similarities to one of those. It reminds me of church windows of the earlier Medieval years. 

Let's call it a quatrefoil. 

PAS record Fingringhoe

My first thoughts were, "horse". I haver never doubted this. I thought that it may have fallen from harness and had been crushed by a cartwheel. Though the damage looks to be really severe, the forces required to damage such thin metal would not have been so very great, would they? 

As always, I went on a research bender...

The closest parallel that I found was another Medieval roundel from my home turf of Essex and near to my childhood Mersea Island paradise. The overall size is very similar and the technique of wrapping the edge of the brass over a backplate of iron identical. 

Also the backplate looks be dished and there's a long rivet like projection on the reverse. This does not however pass through the front plate as it does with the piece under scrutiny here.

Unfortunately, all I found at the time of discovery was the photo of it above which contained some useful information but not nearly enough. I could could not trace more. 

Jousters to the max! 1546 date. That's the ballpark...

It did look to be, perhaps, an item of armour. 

I went on a long, long hunt for an answer, trawling through entire manuals, manuscripts and pictorial accounts of knights and jousters and their armour. Nothing similar was seen in many moons but then I spied something that threw me sideways... 

What are those little spikes on the horse's brows? 

And... Should I be looking at horse armour too?