In 2001, Cliff Bradshaw was hunting around for treasures in a field in Ringlemere Barrow near Sandwich, Kent. A keen detectorist and archaeologist, Bradshaw knew that the signal was extremely faint so had to dig deep to find the booty.

When he eventually got there, he couldn’t believe his find – a rare example of a Bronze Age gold cup, one of only two in existence in the UK and five in the whole of Europe. After the cup was valued, Bradshaw picked up a cool £270,000.



This fabulous and rare gold cup was found at Ringlemere in East Kent in November 2001 by Mr Cliff Bradshaw. It is only the second example of its type to come from Britain. Indeed, only five stylistically related gold cups are known from continental Europe, distributed between Brittany, north-west Germany and northern Switzerland. These early gold vessels, dating to about 1700-1500 BC, had rounded bases and all but one have a single handle riveted neatly to their 'S'-profiled bodies.

The Ringlemere cup is testimony to the skills of gold-workers in the later part of the Early Bronze Age. Beautifully crafted from sheet metal, the body carries multiple horizontal corrugations, a feature most closely paralleled on the Rillaton gold cup, found on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, in the early nineteenth century (see Related Objects).