OBJECT FILE
The Ring of Senicianus (the Vyne Ring)
FOLLOWThe Vyne, Sherborne St John, Hampshire, United Kingdom
THE OBJECT
A gold signet ring of about AD 350–450, 2.5 cm across and 12 g, with a ten-sided hoop and a square bezel engraved with a bust of Venus ('VENVS'). The hoop reads SENICIANE VIVAS IIN DE ('Senicianus, live in God'). A farmer found it ploughing near Silchester, Hampshire, around 1785; by the 1880s it was in the Chute family's collection at The Vyne, which was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1956. It went on display there in April 2013.
REPORTED ACTIVITY
Victorian antiquaries tied it to a lead curse tablet from the temple of Nodens at Lydney Park, on which a man called Silvianus, having lost a ring, asks the god to deny health to 'those who are called Senicianus' until it is returned (RIB 306; see the Lydney curse tablet). The National Trust now calls a direct link between ring and tablet 'unlikely', and says the ring 'has been wrongly identified' as Tolkien's inspiration for the One Ring, though Tolkien did write an appendix on the name Nodens for Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler's Lydney excavation report.
WHERE IT IS NOW
On public display — kept by National Trust (NT 719789). The Vyne, Sherborne St John, Hampshire, United Kingdom.
PROVENANCE · 3 ENTRIES
TRACE ON THE MAP →1785 — CURRENT LOCATION
Found by a farmer ploughing
a field near Silchester, Silchester, Hampshire, United Kingdom
Year-level date. How it passed from the farmer to the Chutes is not recorded; the Trust says the ring 'disappeared' before resurfacing.
Source: National Trust Collections, NT 719789 ('discovered around 1785 by a farmer ploughing near Silchester')
1882 – 1956
The Chute family
The Vyne, Sherborne St John, Hampshire, United Kingdom
1882 is the first published record of the ring at The Vyne, not the date the Chutes got it.
Source: J. James, 'On a Roman Ring', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 6 (1881–82); Chaloner W. Chute, A History of the Vyne (1888); National Trust Collections, NT 719789
1956 — CURRENT LOCATION
National Trust
The Vyne, Sherborne St John, Hampshire, United Kingdom
Source: National Trust Collections, NT 719789 ('bequeathed to the National Trust in 1956'); on display from April 2013 (Wikipedia, Ring of Silvianus)
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS · 0
REPORT AN EXPERIENCE →Nobody has filed an encounter with this object yet.
ADD TO THE CHAIN
Sign in to add a sourced step to this object’s history.