The Moylough Belt Shrine, which has become one of Ireland's finest treasures, was uncovered by John Towey in a Co Sligo bog. It's now on show nearby, writes Rosita Boland
THE FIRST THING you see when you drive into the yard of the modest farmhouse in the townland of Moylough, Co Sligo that has long been the home of the Towey family, is a shed full of turf. Almost 70 years after John Towey found the Moylough Belt Shrine while digging turf on the family's nearby piece of turbary bog, the Toweys continue to light their fires with turf from the same patch of bog.
The eighth-century Moylough Belt Shrine is one of the quartet of the National Museum's most famous exhibits in its treasury. Along with the Ardagh Chalice, the Tara Brooch and the Derrynaflan Hoard, the shrine represents the finest of metal craftsmanship. Even if you have never seen the belt shrine itself, you will almost certainly have seen replicas of part of it: one of the repeating motifs is the blocky-shaped Celtic cross which GAA medals have long been modelled on.
What is a belt shrine? The Moylough one is made of four hinged bronze pieces, beautifully decorated with silver foils, glass and enamel. The hollow cavities contain strips of leather, hence the naming of the piece as a belt shrine. Archaeologists suggest that the richness of the ornamentation indicates the piece was made for ceremonial purposes, or that its function was to contain a sacred relic.
Usually only on display in the National Museum on Dublin's Kildare Street, this summer the belt shrine was temporarily exhibited at the Museum of Country Life, Turlough Park in Co Mayo, not far from where it was originally discovered. It will remain on show there until June next year.
When the belt shrine was discovered in 1945, John Towey, the man who found it, had no idea what it was or how old it was. Towey died in 1995, but his wife Bridie is still alive. She sits by the range in their old family home in Moylough and recalls her husband's story of finding the object.
"It was 1945 and John was 18. He was out at Moylough bog up the road, digging turf for the house. His father was out with him too that day, and they were working at different speeds. It was all hand-cutting with the turf those days, long before the machines."
Towey was digging at a depth of some four feet when his spade hit something hard. "He didn't know what it was. He thought maybe it was a stone. Or a piece of a turf spade that had broken off maybe. So he dug down further and he found it."
There were no wrappings of any kind around the hinged bronze object. Bridie thinks that it was dropped and lost, rather than deliberately buried in the bog, while acknowledging that this can only be speculation. The truth is, we will never know how the object ended up in the bog. "You'd think if you were hiding something, you're wrap it up in something," she hazards. "A rag, even. I think it was lost, or dropped and sank down into the bog over time with the weight of it."
John Towey examined the belt shrine with curiosity, as did his father, working nearby. Then they both went back to work, leaving the future museum treasure on the bog for the rest of the day, laid out on top of a pile of sods. "Oh no, he didn't run home with it there and then or anything," laughs Bridie. "There was work to be done."
There are, in fact, a couple of different versions of what happened next. One version, as recorded by Raghnall Ó Floinn, current head of collections at the National Museum, is that the belt shrine remained in the house porch for some months. Then, through the prompting of the local postman who saw it when he called to the house to deliver mail, word was sent to the museum in Dublin that something had been found in Moylough bog that they might be interested in seeing.
Bridie has a different version. "He left it in the porch, for a while, maybe two, three weeks and everyone who called to the house had a look at it. He didn't wash it, or clean it up or anything, which was a good thing, we were told later. It was Maggie, his sister, who wrote to the museum about it and someone came down to have a look at it."
On the wall of the kitchen where we are sitting, there is an old photograph of the Towey farmhouse, taken from the air before it was extended to the size it is today. In the photograph, the front porch is clearly visible: the place where the eighth-century treasure was left for weeks or months. Bridie takes me out to stand in the place, now part of an extension, where the porch used to be.
In 1945, the man from the National Museum, Dr Joseph Raftery, then acting keeper of antiquities, instantly recognised the belt shrine to be a highly significant find. In museum records, his reaction is described as follows: "It is easily one of the finest things that have been acquired by this division in the last 50 years," and "It is an exceedingly fine specimen of early Christian metal, glass and enamel work of the eighth century AD." On behalf of the museum, Raftery bought it from Towey on the spot for £100.
What did he do with the money? "He bought two calves with it. With part of the money, anyway."
THE BELT SHRINE was sent to England for conservation, and eventually went on display at Kildare Street. In later years, whenever John Towey was in Dublin, he dropped into the museum to look at the treasure that he had so marvellously found by chance.
"Sometimes he would go in for a chat with the people in the museum who knew him, and the bottle of brandy would be brought out. There would be a right old session. He was a Guinness man, and not used to brandy." Towey, a modest man who lived in Moylough for most of his life, was proud to acknowledge to his grandchildren in later years that he was in the history books: the man who discovered something they saw on school tours to the museum, and whose townland formed part of its name.
Down the road from the family house is the entrance to the boreen that leads into the bog. The local community, including Michael Fleming, who first knew Towey as a boy, have put up a commemorative stone here, close to the place where turf spade hit eighth-century bronze 63 years ago. John Towey may be dead, but the Moylough community has not forgotten his historic find.
• The Moylough Belt Shrine is on display at the National Museum of Country Life, Co Mayo, until June 2009