The Ormside Bowl is one of the Yorkshire Museum’s most celebrated treasures, but its discovery remains something of a mystery. It raises unanswered questions about the nature of its preservation and gives us a glimpse into the collecting and curating practices of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, who founded the museum, during its earliest years of existence. In this sense, it is both uniquely beautiful and a reflection of the layered histories of many other museum objects.  

In early 1824, William Alexander’s printing shop on Castlegate was a hive of activity, overlooked by Clifford’s Tower on its high mound nearby. Shopworkers bustled back and forth between the presses, fitting tiny pieces of inky type into place. The company had printed a range of texts, some of them intended for the city’s thriving Quaker community, but now they were preparing a new publication for a new kind of organisation. The Yorkshire Philosophical Society had been founded in December 1822 by a circle of prominent local men, including surgeons and clerics. They shared an interest in the natural sciences, which they would have known as ‘natural philosophy,’ and they agreed to meet regularly and share objects from their personal collections of artefacts. 

It was soon decided to publish an annual report of the Society’s activities, listing lectures that had been delivered alongside donations to their ever-expanding collection. The very first report was for 1823, hence Alexander and Son’s busy printing schedule early the following year. Once the final version was complete and distributed to the Society, its members could marvel at the latest acquisitions, including the following: 

‘A curiously ornamented Silver and Copper Gilt Bowl, probably of the Fourteenth Century, found in Ormside Burial Ground, Westmoreland.’ 

Later research has revealed that this dating of the Ormside Bowl is somewhat conservative, as it’s actually around five hundred years older than the Society initially thought, and it provides a crucial insight into that most enigmatic of historical figures – the Viking raider.  

The bowl is technically two bowls, an outer one and an inner one, held together with clips on the rim. The outer one is decorated in a style that was popular among the Anglian community (who occupied England before the Vikings arrived) in the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia, but it was found in a context that suggests a different sort of owner altogether. St James’s Church still stands in the village of Great Ormside, Cumbria, nestled alongside the River Eden, between the Lake District and the North Pennines. It stands on an ancient mound, thought to have ritual significance, but most importantly for the story of the Ormside Bowl, the area that is now the churchyard was used as a burial site by the Vikings. This is where the key mystery behind its discovery enters the picture: was it found, as some have suggested, in the grave of a Viking warrior, whose other possessions are now displayed in a Carlisle museum, or was it found in the church itself, which may be possible given its fine state of preservation? This may seem at first glance like an arbitrary choice, but it could fundamentally alter the way the object is interpreted and understood. 

If the bowl was buried with a Viking warrior, it could have been an item he had seized from a monastery or other centre of wealth, perhaps in a religious centre like York, and carried it to where he ultimately settled, and died, in Cumbria. If it was found in the church, a range of new questions arise: was it left there for safekeeping, perhaps to avoid exactly the kind of raids that would put it in Viking hands? How had it been used in the meantime? Who took care of it, and was it inherited across generations? And how did it survive so many subsequent events, from Reformation to civil war, and remain in such good condition?  

The distance between our time and 1823, let alone the Viking Age, may prevent these questions from ever being definitively answered. What we can say is that the Ormside Bowl was among the earliest objects in the Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s collection, and since the Society opened the Yorkshire Museum, one of the first purpose-built museums in the country, in 1830, it has given the public a tantalising glimpse of this turbulent period in England’s history.