The Eadred Reliquary was one of the wide-ranging art forgeries produced by Shaun Greenhalgh and his family, of Bolton, Greater Manchester.
In 1989, Shaun Greenhalgh's father, George, tried to sell to Manchester University a supposed 10th-century Anglo-Saxon silver reliquary, containing a small piece of wood which he claimed was a fragment of the True Cross. [1] He said he had found the vessel while metal detecting in a park in Preston, Lancashire. [2]
Shaun, who had crafted the object, intended it to resemble a known missing Anglo-Saxon piece, dating back to the time of Eadred, the King of England from 946 to 955. The British Museum decided that the reliquary was not genuine, [3] but the Greenhalgh family managed to sell it privately for a modest £100. [1]
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The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886.
Eadwig was King of England from 23 November 955 until his death in 959. He was the elder son of Edmund I and his first wife Ælfgifu, who died in 944. Eadwig and his brother Edgar were young children when their father was killed trying to rescue his seneschal from attack by an outlawed thief on 26 May 946. As Edmund's sons were too young to rule he was succeeded by his brother Eadred, who suffered from ill health and died unmarried in his early 30s.
Edgar was King of the English from 959 until his death in 975. He became king of all England on his brother's death. He was the younger son of King Edmund I and his first wife Ælfgifu. A detailed account of Edgar's reign is not possible, because only a few events were recorded by chroniclers and monastic writers were more interested in recording the activities of the leaders of the church.
Eadred was King of the English from 26 May 946 until his death in 955. He was the younger son of Edward the Elder and his third wife Eadgifu, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. His elder brother, Edmund, was killed trying to protect his seneschal from an attack by a violent thief. Edmund's two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, were then young children, so Eadred became king. He suffered from ill health in the last years of his life and he died at the age of a little over thirty, having never married. He was succeeded successively by his nephews, Eadwig and Edgar.
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England, 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Manchester, 9 miles (14 km) south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and 12 miles (19 km) north of Macclesfield. The Rivers Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. It is the main settlement of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Stockport. In 2011 it had a population of 137,130.
Wulfstan was Archbishop of York between 931 and 952. He is often known as Wulfstan I, to separate him from Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York.
Shaun Edwards, OBE is an English rugby union coach and former rugby league player, who is the defence coach for the France national team. A scrum-half or stand-off, Edwards is the most decorated player in rugby league history, with 37 winner's medals. In 2015 he was the 25th person inducted into the Rugby League Hall of Fame.
Æthelwold of Winchester was Bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984 and one of the leaders of the tenth-century monastic reform movement in Anglo-Saxon England.
Spearhafoc was an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon artist and Benedictine monk, whose artistic talent was apparently the cause of his rapid elevation to Abbot of Abingdon in 1047–48 and Bishop-Elect of London in 1051. After his consecration as bishop was thwarted, he vanished with the gold and jewels he had been given to make into a crown for King Edward the Confessor, and was never seen again. He was also famous for a miracle which impacted his career.
The Monymusk Reliquary is an eighth century Scottish house-shape reliquary made of wood and metal characterised by an Insular fusion of Gaelic and Pictish design and Anglo-Saxon metalworking, presumably by the Celtic Church monks of Iona Abbey. It is now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
John David Robb is an English musician and journalist. He is the bassist and singer for the post-punk band the Membranes. He is also the vocalist in the punk rock band Goldblade.
Singleton is a village and civil parish in Lancashire, England. It is situated on the coastal plain called the Fylde. It is located south-east of Poulton-le-Fylde, and at the 2001 census had a population of 877, increasing to 889 at the 2011 Census. The parish is sometimes referred to as two parts: Great Singleton, the larger part containing the village, and Little Singleton, a small area north of the village bordering the River Wyre.
Shaun Greenhalgh is a British artist and former art forger. Over a seventeen-year period, between 1989 and 2006, he produced a large number of forgeries. With the assistance of his brother and elderly parents, who fronted the sales side of the operation, he successfully sold his fakes internationally to museums, auction houses, and private buyers, accruing nearly £1 million.
The Amarna Princess, sometimes referred to as the "Bolton Amarna Princess," is a statue forged by British art forger Shaun Greenhalgh and sold by his father George Sr. to Bolton Museum for £440,000 in 2003. Based on the Amarna art-style of ancient Egypt, the purchase of the Amarna Princess was feted as a "coup" by the museum and it remained on display for three years. However, in November 2005, Greenhalgh was brought under suspicion by Scotland Yard's Arts and Antiquities Unit, and the statue was impounded for further examination in March 2006. It is now displayed as a part of an exhibition of fakes and forgeries.
The Faun is a sculpture by British forger Shaun Greenhalgh. He successfully passed it off as a work by Paul Gauguin, selling it at Sotheby's for £20,700 in 1994. Three years later, in 1997, it was bought by the Art Institute of Chicago for an undisclosed sum, thought to be about $125,000. It was hailed by them as "one of its most important acquisitions in the last twenty years."
Matthew Greenhalgh is an English screenwriter from Manchester. He is best known for writing the screenplays of several biopic films, including Control (2007), Nowhere Boy (2009), Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017), and Back to Black (2024). He has received five BAFTA nominations, winning once for Most Promising Newcomer for Control—which also earned him an Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Screenplay.
The Silverdale Hoard is a collection of over 200 pieces of silver jewellery and coins discovered near Silverdale, Lancashire, England, in September 2011. The items were deposited together in and under a lead container buried about 16 inches (41 cm) underground which was found in a field by a metal detectorist. It is believed to date to around AD 900, a time of intense conflict between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish settlers of northern England. The hoard is one of the largest Viking hoards ever discovered in the UK. It has been purchased by Lancashire Museums Service and has been displayed at Lancaster City Museum and the Museum of Lancashire in Preston. It is particularly significant for its inclusion of a coin stamped with the name of a previously unknown Viking ruler.
Janina Sara Maria Ramirez, sometimes credited as Nina Ramirez, is a British art historian, cultural historian, and TV presenter. She specialises in interpreting symbols and examining works of art within their historical context.
In the early Middle Ages, there were distinct material cultures evident in the different federations and kingdoms within what is now Scotland. Pictish art was the only uniquely Scottish medieval style; it can be seen in the extensive survival of carved stones, particularly in the north and east of the country, which hold a variety of recurring images and patterns. It can also be seen in elaborate metal work that largely survives in buried hoards. Irish-Scots art from the kingdom of Dál Riata suggests that it was one of the places, as a crossroads between cultures, where the Insular style developed.
The Uttoxeter Casket, also known as Philip Nelson's casket, is an Anglo Saxon reliquary from Uttoxeter, Staffordshire in England. As of 2017, it is held at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, United States. House-shaped and carved from a single piece of boxwood, it remains the only known surviving wood carving with such an elaborate iconographic programme from this period of British history.