Emma Herbert-Davies

School of History

Emma’s project has allowed her to contribute to the development of a new public engagement project using materials within Special Collections. The project focuses on an eighteenth-century coin cabinet sold to the Brotherton Library in 1954 by the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral. It contains about 3,000 coins, many Greek and Roman but others English from the Iron Age to the 18th century, and is now kept in Special Collections as a distinct part of the Brotherton coin collection. Special Collections have just assumed responsibility for this collection and are now keen to develop its potential for public engagement and as a research resource. These coins have never been fully catalogued and the history of the collection is little known; previous research on it survives only in paper accession registers and the notes of previous curators of the collection. We do not currently know the cabinet’s eighteenth-century owner or why he collected what he did, and the coins themselves are not fully identified. Finding all this out and linking the collector to his collection will form the basis of a virtual exhibition on the internet and perhaps a physical display within Special Collections. Emma has said "Without the scholarship I would have never had the opportunity to find out there was a whole new subject out there that I could become passionate about."