Derrynaflan
Two men with a metal detector lifted five liturgical vessels out of this bog island on February 17, 1980, and the father delivered them to the National Museum the next day. The case that followed reached the Supreme Court, which held that the state owned the hoard by right of its own sovereignty, not as heir to the Crown's treasure trove.
Search Area
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- Start point
- Loch Doire Bhile parking lot
- Visitor access
- Derrynaflan Monastic Site, Lurgoe, Littleton Bog, Littleton, Co. Tipperary
- Measured from
- The ruined chancel
- Trail
- Littleton Labyrinth, opened 2025
- On foot
- About 2 hours from the Horse and Jockey
- Nearest town
- Littleton
The zone drawn here is the island of dry ground in Littleton Bog and the cutaway around it. It is a general search zone and not an exact site, and the field is sometimes stocked.
The Legend
Derrynaflan is an island of dry ground in Littleton Bog, and there was a monastery on it. What survives is a medieval church with the east, north, and south chancel walls standing and five windows in them, the foundations of a nave, a ring barrow, and a cemetery.
On February 17, 1980, Michael Webb and his son went onto the island with a metal detector. They had implied permission to walk the land. They had none to dig it, and the site was already under a preservation order.
What came out was a silver chalice, a composite silver paten, a hoop that may be a stand for it, a liturgical strainer, and a bronze basin that had been turned upside down over the rest of it. The next day, February 18, the elder Webb delivered them to the National Museum with a letter from his solicitor.
The case
Sotheby's valued the hoard at IR£5 to 6 million. The museum's director told the elder Webb he would be "honourably treated," and the Webbs sued when they judged they had not been.
The High Court found in 1986 that the vessels belonged to the finders. The Supreme Court reversed that on December 16, 1987. Webb v Ireland agreed that the Crown's prerogative of treasure trove had not passed into Irish law as a royal right, then held that the state had an equivalent right of its own. Chief Justice Finlay wrote that state ownership of "antiquities of importance which are discovered and which have no known owner" is "a necessary ingredient of sovereignty in a modern State." The court upheld the state's title on that ground and gave the Webbs IR£50,000.
The Oireachtas had already restricted detection devices in the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1987, enacted that July. The judgment suggested going further. The National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994 did, vesting in the state any archaeological object with no known owner found after the Act took effect.
What is still in the bog
Nobody knows who buried the vessels, or when, or why they were never lifted again. The usual reading is that they were hidden during a raid, which would put the burial centuries later than the objects were made.
After the find, the National Museum dug the find spot for about 6 weeks with the landowners' permission and recovered missing parts of the paten, the strainer, and the basin.
What May Be Out There
The five vessels are out of the ground and behind glass in Dublin. What is left is the island they came from, which has been excavated only in part.
- Whatever else the monastery held, if the 1980 hoard was one deposit among several.
- The cemetery around the church.
- The ring barrow on the same rise.
- Recovered so far: a silver chalice, a composite silver paten, a hoop that may be its stand, a liturgical strainer, and the bronze basin that had been turned upside down over all of it.
The Evidence
Documented record
- The five vessels themselves, on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland.
- Webb v Ireland [1988] IR 353, the Supreme Court judgment.
- The preservation order over the site, made under the National Monuments Act 1930 and in force on the day of the find.
- The National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1987, which restricted detection devices, and the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994, which vested ownerless archaeological finds in the state.
- The standing church, national monument reference 335, in state guardianship.
Legend and hearsay
- The account that the vessels were hidden from Viking raiders, which is plausible and has never been shown.
- Claims about what else the island holds, none of which rests on a survey.
- The competing versions of how the Webbs were treated by the museum, which differ sharply depending on who is telling it.
Known Clues
The basin. The bronze basin had been inverted over the other four objects. That is an act of protection rather than a discard, and it is the strongest single indication that whoever put the hoard in the ground expected to come back for it.
The date gap. The vessels are 8th and 9th century work. The burial is undated. If they were concealed during a raid, the deposit could be centuries younger than the objects themselves, which is why nobody will put a year on it.
The preservation order. The site was already legally protected when the detector went over it, under a preservation order made on June 8, 1935.
Visiting Information
The hoard is not here. The chalice, paten, strainer, and basin are on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street in Dublin, where admission is free, so seeing the objects and standing where they came out of the ground are two separate trips.
The Littleton Labyrinth trail opened in June 2025, a Tipperary County Council and Bord na Móna project running along a disused bog railway from Loch Doire Bhile to the island. Before that the approach was a walk across worked-out peat with no marked route.
There is nothing at the site itself: no interpretation, no facilities, and no supervision.
Reality Check
The treasure is not in question here, because it is in a case in Dublin and anyone can go and look at it. What the site keeps is everything around the hole: a monastic island excavated only in part, and no record at all of who put the vessels in the ground or in what year. The court case is the part that changed things. Webb v Ireland found that the Crown's prerogative of treasure trove had not survived independence as a royal right, upheld the state's title as an attribute of its own sovereignty, and suggested legislation to widen it. The National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994 followed, vesting ownerless archaeological finds in the state.
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