On a sunny evening in September 1868, Jim Quinn and Paddy Flanagan were digging in a potato field in Co Limerick when the boys stumbled across a stash of ancient metalwork now known as the Ardagh hoard.
Among the treasure was the Ardagh Chalice, a silver cup dating to the 8th century, which is one of Ireland’s most famous examples of early Christian metalwork and is now regarded with the Book of Kells as one of the finest works of Celtic art.
This year marks 150 years since Flanagan, who died penniless, and Quinn unearthed the artefacts on farmland owned by Quinn’s widowed mother and the National Museum of Ireland’s archaeology department is marking the occasion with a tour of its treasury exhibition.
In Ardagh