Manx national treasures celebrated with stamp set

Some of the Isle of Man's most remarkable archaeological discoveries have been celebrated in a new set of stamps.

The six-piece Manx National Treasures collection features items spanning more than 3,500 years of the island's history.

A collaboration between the Isle of Man Post Office and Manx National Heritage (MNH), the collection is said to offer an "insight into the people, traditions and stories that have shaped the island's history".

The items include a prehistoric necklace, Viking brooches and a Bronze Age spoon.

Curator of archaeology for MNH Allison Fox said the collection captured the beauty of some of the island's most significant artefacts.

The bronze brooches, which date back to AD 900, belonged to a Viking Age woman.

The first of their kind to be found on the island, the brooches feature intricately created pairs of birds.

Fox said the find was significant because it "shows that we had somebody who identified as a Scandinavian and who was a female over here back then in quite the earlier part of the Viking Age".

A jet necklace found during the Round Mounds of the Isle of Man project in the west to the island in 2018 is also featured.

The jewellery, found alongside a matching bracelet in a prehistoric burial mound on a farm near Kirk Michael, is made up of 122 beads which have been delicately decorated.

The piece was designated as treasure because it was not only "aesthetically outstanding" but a rare find not only for the island but also for the broader British Isles, Fox said.

The necklace is currently on display in the Mind Your Language exhibition at the Manx Museum.

A 2,000-year-old bronze spoon found on farmland and thought to have been used for telling the future is also celebrated in the collection.

The item is one of only 28 of its kind found anywhere in the world.

Fox said: "We don't have the same amount of material, cultural burials or archaeological or domestic sites from the Iron Age, so to have this [is a] really interesting find."

The spoon can be seen in the prehistoric gallery in the Manx Museum in Douglas.

One of the most striking items in the set is a silver Viking brooch discovered in 2020 that is one of the largest of its kind ever to have been found.

The possessions of a very wealthy person from the time, it was found alongside a gold arm ring and a highly decorated silver armband.

Fox said the quality of the artefacts found on the Isle of Man "demonstrates what an important place it was back then".

Meanwhile a crucifix from about 1400 - known as the Mylecharaine silver cross - is also depicted in the collection.

Thought to have originally belonged to an abbot of a medieval monastery in Lezayre, a traditional ballad tells the tale of it being found in the 1600s in the wetlands in the north of the island.

After being handed down through the generations of a family it was given to the Manx Museum during the early part of the 20th Century.

The final artifact celebrated in the stamp collection is a Medieval gold ring found in 2020.

Created as a mourning ring, it features a small crystal stone that is overlayed over gold thread spelling the initials JD, which is thought to commemorate the 7th Earl of Derby and Lord of Mann, James Stanley, who was beheaded in Bolton in 1651.

Fox said the ring "potentially being in memorial for him is a really significant illustration" of the events during the English Civil War.

Both the ring and the crucifix are on display in the Medieval gallery in the Manx Museum in Douglas.

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