Lynn Museum (Norfolk) has one of the best pilgrim badge collections in the country, and most are on display – so it is well worth a look! Tradition says that local jeweller Thomas Pung (d.1906) bought the badges from local children who mudlarked Lynn’s muddy rivers, notably the Purfleet. Some of these, at least, came into the collection of local solicitor and antiquarian Edward Milligen Beloe (d.1932), who in 1912 bought one of Lynn’s most historic buildings, the Greenland Fishery (built 1605 for John Atkin), and used it to display his eclectic collection of antiquities, ephemera, maps and paintings. It was opened to the public as The Greenland Fishery Folk Lore Museum. Visitors would enter by a small bakery, where they could even buy ‘ships biscuits’ made on the premises by a certain Mr Lewis (no relation btw). Following Edward’s death (1932) the collection was dispersed, with the pilgrim badges and other medieval objects being transferred to Lynn Museum (founded 1844).
Over 40 years ago, Brian Spencer, a leading authority of pilgrim souvenirs based at the Museum of London, published the Lynn badge collection in his booklet Medieval Pilgrim Badges from Norfolk. Since then, many new things have been learnt about pilgrim badges, thanks to the recording of metal-detected finds by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) – a project to record archaeological finds made by the public in England and Wales. Also, the photography of small finds has significantly improved, as well as their recording in general.
As such a new project (the Lynn badges project), affiliated with the AHRC-funded Medieval Ritual Landscape project, is underway, to digitally record the Lynn badges and produce a new popular publication and catalogue. As the first step, the Lynn collection was photographed in February 2024 by PAS volunteer Rod Trevaskus and weighed and measured by retired archaeologist, metal-detectorist and former PAS Norfolk Finds Liaison Assistant Garry Crace, working closely with Michael Lewis (Head of the PAS) and Lynn Museum staff, notably Oliver Bone (Curator), Dayna Woolbright and Jan Summerfield. Currently, Rod is editing the photographs to publication standard, whilst Michael is drafting text for the book. The edited images will be available to Lynn Museum for their digital catalogue of the collection.
