Roman Oxfordshire Coins Display

Roman Oxfordshire Coins is on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Gallery 7, the Money Gallery, and it's one of those things that's been running in the background for a while now. It brings together Roman coins from the museum's collection that were all found right here in Oxfordshire, and it uses them to trace the region's story from the Roman conquest in 43 CE through to the end of Roman Britain around 410 CE.

What's nice about it is that it doesn't just stick to the big historical dates. The coins cover the everyday stuff too — trade, soldiers' pay, and taxes — alongside Britain's place in the wider empire and the offerings people made to the gods. It's a good way to see how the Roman presence actually worked on the ground, from the high-level politics of the empire down to the coins that changed hands in a local market.

Among the objects is the Henley Hoard, an Iron Age find of 32 gold staters buried in a flintstone nodule in Henley-on-Thames around 55-45 BCE. Beside it, you'll find coins of emperors from Claudius I to Arcadius, discovered in local spots like Cowley, Dorchester, Asthall, Horton, Shiplake and Childrey. It puts the history in a local context — these weren't just found anywhere; they were found in the places we still know by name.

It also gives a sense of the scale of what's still out there. Since 1997, the Portable Antiquities Scheme has recorded more than 360,000 Roman coins from England and Wales, and nearly 15,000 of those come from Oxfordshire. The display is free, and it's open daily from 10am to 5pm at the Ashmolean on Beaumont Street, OX1 2PH, through to 29 November 2026.