In August 2013, metal detectorists from the West Midlands were searching in Overseal fields and discovered something unusual. About the size of an old penny (20-25mm diameter) and made of bronze, it turned out to be a seal matrix, circular in design, with an inscription around the outer face and a pattern in the centre. A seal matrix is a tool used to make an impression into a heated daub of wax, which was then used to close a document and make it private, and to authenticate it. Once the find was cleaned up it was possible to make an impression from the seal matrix, perhaps for the first time in many hundreds of years. We can approximately date the matrix from the design and wording; this one had an inscription around the outer face that says:
S. Henrici, Aveo
This has a meaning. S. is the standard beginning of a seal matrix inscription and simply means ‘the seal of’ or ‘the seal belonging to’, followed by the genitive form of the latinised name for Henry, and the Latin word ‘aveo’ meaning greetings or salutations. The central design is categorised as radial, and this category usually has two or more intersecting branches, petals, leaves or lobes. In our case these are truncated by an upright staff with a cross bar making this into a Christian cross design. Ours does not quite conform to the standardised form in that the central design appears to be a double intersecting spiral, almost labyrinthine, cut across from the centre to the top by a tall cross.
This then would be the seal of a person called Henry and the style dates the seal matrix to the 13th century. I thought that this would be as much as we would be able to say about the seal matrix, but separately I had been researching the old Church Way, the path along which our ancestors walked to church from Overseal to Netherseal and came across a reference to not only ‘Chirche Weye’ but perhaps to Henry himself. Translated from the original Latin text, the document is a deed dating to circa 1280, in a land transfer deed:
A gift by William son of Henric the Clerk of Greate Seale to the Abbey and Monks of Merevale of one acre of arable land in a field of Seale beyond the Chirchweye.
Is this him? Certainly, the date is correct, the seal matrix is from the 13th century, the name is the same and it would have had to have been owned by someone of local importance, learning, and who was literate. If so, then we know he had a son, William, who gave an acre of land to the church, and that Henry himself was the ‘Clerke of Greate Seale’. Greate Seale is Netherseal, the main village in the parish as it then was, and the clerk would have been an important local dignitary and have worked for the church. This dates the seal matrix neatly to around the third quarter of the 13th century and tells us just a little more about our history.
It would be wonderful to bring this item back home one day and help tell the story of our village.
