The British Museum has successfully raised £3.5m to keep a gold pendant linked to King Henry VIII’s marriage to his first wife, Katherine (also Catherine) of Aragon.
The central London museum launshed a fund-raising appeal lat October so it could permanently acquire the Tudor Heart, found by a metal detectorist in a Warwickshire field in 2019.
It has now announced that it reached its fundraising goal after receiving £360,000 in public donations and a string of donations from grants, trusts and arts organisations.
Museum director Nicholas Cullinan said: “The success of the campaign shows the power of history to spark the imagination and why objects like the Tudor Heart should be in a museum.”
Research led by the British Museum has revealed that the Tudor Heart pendant may have been made to celebrate the betrothal of their two-year-old daughter Princess Mary to the eight-month-old French heir-apparent in 1518.
The pendant unites the Tudor rose with Katherine’s pomegranate symbol and features a banner that reads “tousiors”, the old French for “always”.
