Documents

When the churchyard of St Mary’s Church, Pilton, was extended to the north in 1867, the beautiful gold and sapphire Prior’s Ring was found in a ball of clay under an ash tree. A paper by John Cherry, published in the Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society in 2016, suggested a possible history dating back to it being made in about 1300.
We are now able to publish a more complete fictional version of that story of how and when the ring came into being, where the gold and sapphire came from, and how the ring finally came to be in Pilton. That the ring is real there is no doubt. It is held in the North Devon Athenaeum. This version of its story, which you can download, is based on a mixture of facts, dates, historical people, places and events and a lot of imagination. We hope it makes interesting reading and regret that the real story will never be known.
The Devon Archaeological Society paper can be seen by following this link:
http://vimp.thepiltonstory.org/document/DEVON-ARCHAEOLOGICAL-SOCIETY-PAP...