Rediscovered 17th century Irish marriage locket expected to sell for thousands

A 17th-century Irish marriage locket belonging to a Catholic landowning family in Co. Cork, and rediscovered by a farm labourer nearly two centuries later is expected to fetch £3,000-£5,000 at auction in London. 

The silver locket, dated to around 1660, is thought to have been given by Robert Coppinger to his wife Margarett Roche to commemorate their marriage. 

Its exterior is decorated with scenes of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi, while the interior depicts the Crucifixion. Enclosed within is a rare Italian coin, a gold doppia struck at Piacenza during the reign of Ranuccio I Farnese, dated 1619.

Rediscovered Irish silver marriage locket, 1660. (Roseberys)

The locket remained lost for generations before being accidentally unearthed near the ruined Mashanaglass Castle, outside Macroom, Co Cork, around 1850.

The locket will be offered by Roseberys London in its Fine & Decorative auction on Thursday, October 1, with an estimate of £3,000-£5,000.

The Coppingers of Carhue, in the parish of Magourney, were Catholic landowners with longstanding connections to the area. The reverse of the locket is inscribed: ROBT COPPINGER & MARGARETT COPPINGER als. ROCHE.

(Roseberys)

A surviving 19th-century account records how the locket was discovered by a farm labourer working beneath the ruins at Mashanaglass. His spade struck the Nativity scene on the cover, leaving damage still visible today.

He took the object to the Rev. S. G. Fairlough, rector of the parish of Ahinagh, who presented it to Thomas Stephen Coppinger of Sandyhill, Co Cork, bringing the locket back into the hands of the family for whom it had been made almost two centuries earlier.

Its unusual provenance is supported by documentation accompanying the lot, including a copy of the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society from 1895 containing an account of the discovery, and a handwritten letter from the Keeper of Coins at the British Museum, dated 1892, identifying the gold coin.

A miniature of Thomas Stephen Coppinger. (Roseberys)

Anna Evans, Head of Works of Art at Rosebery's, said: “It is extraordinary to be able to trace this locket back to a marriage in Co Cork in 1660, and then pick up its story again almost 200 years later when it was struck by a farm labourer’s spade beneath the ruins of Mashanaglass Castle.

"What makes the story even more remarkable is that it found its way back to the Coppinger family. An object made for Robert and Margarett Coppinger, lost for generations in the Cork landscape, was eventually returned to their descendants.

"Very few objects survive with such a vivid sense of the people and place they belonged to.”