0:05:14 > 0:05:17CHURCH BELL TOLLS
0:08:07 > 0:08:10CHURCH BELL TOLLS
0:09:19 > 0:09:24This bell has long been venerated as being the bell of St Patrick.
0:09:24 > 0:09:26Was it St Patrick's bell?
0:09:26 > 0:09:29It's highly unlikely that it was the actual bell of St Patrick.
0:09:32 > 0:09:36The bell, probably, I would say, dates to around the eighth century,
0:09:36 > 0:09:38though it could date a little earlier than that,
0:09:38 > 0:09:41maybe even as far back as the sixth century.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44Of course, St Patrick is a fifth-century saint,
0:09:44 > 0:09:45so we've got a problem there.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48So, yes, it's a fake, but it's a venerable fake.
0:09:50 > 0:09:56The bell was venerated at Armagh for a very long time before
0:09:56 > 0:10:01it was enshrined, probably around... A little after the year 1100.
0:10:03 > 0:10:07Armagh was hugely political,
0:10:07 > 0:10:11and the politics of this period are completely interwoven
0:10:11 > 0:10:13with the politics of the Church.
0:10:13 > 0:10:17This is a period when you have two major rivals
0:10:17 > 0:10:20for the Kingship of Ireland -
0:10:20 > 0:10:23Donal McLoughlin, the King of Northern O'Neill,
0:10:23 > 0:10:26and Muirchertach Ua Briain, the King of Munster.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30But it is also a period when Armagh is a little worried
0:10:30 > 0:10:33about its position as the main centre
0:10:33 > 0:10:37of the Irish Church, as the primacy in Ireland.
0:10:37 > 0:10:42For a period, Armagh sort of hedged its bets on who would it would back
0:10:42 > 0:10:44in the contest for the High Kingship,
0:10:44 > 0:10:48because both these guys were fairly closely matched,
0:10:48 > 0:10:54and O'Brien actually gave a gift of gold and cattle to Armagh -
0:10:54 > 0:10:57for which read bribe, a brown envelope.
0:10:57 > 0:11:02But eventually however Armagh backed McLoughlin for the High Kingship.
0:11:03 > 0:11:09McLoughlin in reply enshrines this relic of St Patrick.
0:11:14 > 0:11:18It bears an inscription, and on that inscription
0:11:18 > 0:11:22he is referred to as the patron who commissioned
0:11:22 > 0:11:24the making of the bell.
0:11:27 > 0:11:29With its association with St Patrick,
0:11:29 > 0:11:32it must have been particularly important to Armagh.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35Yes, that's absolutely true.
0:11:38 > 0:11:40It's even got wider associations
0:11:40 > 0:11:43with another very, very famous northern saint
0:11:43 > 0:11:45and that's Colm Cille.
0:11:50 > 0:11:53The belief is that the bell was removed from the grave
0:11:53 > 0:11:55of St Patrick by St Colm Cille.
0:11:55 > 0:12:02So you can see here a combination of Armagh, as the primacy,
0:12:02 > 0:12:05the Monastic Federation of St Colm Cille,
0:12:05 > 0:12:08who is of course of the Northern O'Neill,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11tied in then with the political ambitions
0:12:11 > 0:12:14of the King of Northern O'Neill to be High King of Ireland.
0:12:21 > 0:12:27It would be a mistake simply to look at these objects
0:12:27 > 0:12:29as devotional objects.
0:12:29 > 0:12:34You know, there is a lot of politics going on in relation
0:12:34 > 0:12:38to the underlying reasons why these objects have been made.
0:22:25 > 0:22:28Greer, this is a diverse collection of objects.
0:22:28 > 0:22:29What do they have in common?
0:22:29 > 0:22:31Quite a lot of the material on display
0:22:31 > 0:22:34in the Saints and Scholars gallery of the Ulster Museum
0:22:34 > 0:22:37actually came from the dredging of the River Blackwater
0:22:37 > 0:22:39which borders Armagh and Tyrone.
0:22:39 > 0:22:42There was a particular concentration of finds
0:22:42 > 0:22:45in and around the townland of Shanmullagh.
0:22:45 > 0:22:47In among it, there were a number of objects that were
0:22:47 > 0:22:51characteristically of Viking or Scandinavian origin.
0:22:51 > 0:22:56If you look very, very closely, you will see a little twisted knot.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59That's a characteristic Viking trait as to the way the goldsmiths
0:22:59 > 0:23:02finished their rings, so we can be quite certain that this is
0:23:02 > 0:23:05a Viking or a Scandinavian gold ring.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08It's a lovely, delicate, little knot, it's lovely.
0:23:16 > 0:23:21This is a really substantial silver ingot from the dredgings.
0:23:21 > 0:23:24The idea really of the ingot was that it could be weighed
0:23:24 > 0:23:26and it acted as a form of currency.
0:23:26 > 0:23:29The thing that they obviously needed
0:23:29 > 0:23:32if you're talking about weights is a set of scales,
0:23:32 > 0:23:37and miraculously from the river we have the remains of a set of scales.
0:23:37 > 0:23:39So this would be the beam balance,
0:23:39 > 0:23:41and then at either side of the beam balance
0:23:41 > 0:23:45you would have had the little scale pan of which only one survives.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48Then we have a series of Viking weights.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51But the really unusual thing about the Viking weights
0:23:51 > 0:23:53- is if you actually look at the top of them...- Can I pick one up?
0:23:53 > 0:23:57You can pick them up. You can actually see that they have
0:23:57 > 0:23:59gone to the trouble of decorating them.
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Oh, yes.
0:24:03 > 0:24:07This is I suppose a characteristic trait of a Viking raid,
0:24:07 > 0:24:09because, what they did when they raided metalwork,
0:24:09 > 0:24:11they broke it into smaller bits
0:24:11 > 0:24:15and they reused it in making their own jewellery.
0:24:15 > 0:24:18I suppose maybe that's what gives the Vikings a bad name,
0:24:18 > 0:24:22this idea of hacking up our fine chalices and church metalwork.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27This is part of a shrine that was designed to hold
0:24:27 > 0:24:29the relics of a saint.
0:24:29 > 0:24:34This is a beautiful, tiny church bell modelled on larger church bells,
0:24:34 > 0:24:38and, as you can see, this is obviously not intact.
0:24:38 > 0:24:42So they literally broke and ripped the shrines and the metalwork apart.
0:24:43 > 0:24:45I suppose an obvious question is
0:24:45 > 0:24:48what was the source of some of this church metalwork?
0:24:48 > 0:24:53And a very obvious answer was St Patrick's cathedral city itself.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56We know that Armagh was raided on numerous occasions
0:24:56 > 0:24:59and the first record in amongst the early annals
0:24:59 > 0:25:01is the year 832, where it actually says
0:25:01 > 0:25:04Armagh was raided three times in one month.
0:25:08 > 0:25:11How did these objects end up in the river?
0:25:11 > 0:25:14We know that there was a Viking fleet on Lough Neagh,
0:25:14 > 0:25:16so perhaps we can imagine the raid taking place
0:25:16 > 0:25:18in Armagh and then making their way
0:25:18 > 0:25:21along the River Blackwater into the Lough Neagh
0:25:21 > 0:25:23when some disaster befell them,
0:25:23 > 0:25:25maybe I like to think it's the idea of St Patrick's revenge -
0:25:25 > 0:25:30this is what happens if you steal all the best church metalwork.
0:25:30 > 0:25:33So is this a particularly significant collection of objects?
0:25:33 > 0:25:35Well, in my opinion,
0:25:35 > 0:25:39this in many ways entirely changed our view of early Christian Armagh.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43Because what we had on one hand was written evidence of Viking raids,
0:25:43 > 0:25:45but we had no proof.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48What we are looking at now, it's the final part of the story.
0:25:48 > 0:25:51We know that there were Viking raids in Armagh,
0:25:51 > 0:25:54yet there were very, very few Viking objects from the city.
0:25:54 > 0:25:58And here we have a range of material, unmistakable Viking in origin.
0:25:59 > 0:26:02This really is an extraordinary find,
0:26:02 > 0:26:05and it's one of the most significant discoveries in recent years.