[3] Subsequently, lost, the Risley Park Lanx re-emerged in the 1990s, as a supposed heirloom of the now-notorious art forger Shaun Greenhalgh and his family.
However he became sufficiently interested after the discovery of the Corbridge Lanx to have Gerard Vandergucht make line drawings and an engraving of the remaining pieces.
[5] Stukeley, at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in 1736, read his account, which was later published,[6] complete with a dedication underneath the drawing of the lanx: To the most noble prince PEREGRINE duke of Ancaſter and keſteven, Marquis and Earl of Lindſey, Baron Willughby of Ereſby, hereditary Lord great Chamberlain of England, Lord Lieutenant & Custers Rotuleram of the county of Lincoln &c, &c, &c...[5] This lanx, what was left of it, was decorated with pastoral and hunting motifs around the edges, and at the centre was a scene from a boar hunt, similar to the pagan ones on the Mildenhall bowls.
This Exuperius was the Bishop of Bayeux, and it was suggested that he had gifted the lanx to his own church, before it was plundered by Henry I after he wrested the city from his brother Duke Robert in 1106.
[1] A third theory suggests that the lanx was actually cast in Roman Britain by a local pewterer and "eventually came into the possession of an important Christian", another Exuperius.
In 1991, the elderly George Greenhalgh came forward with an item resembling the Risley Park Lanx, claiming that he and his family had found the pieces and welded them together.
[10] No suspicions were raised by the fact that the pieces did not match the arrangement in the Stukeley engraving – itself a mere guess by Vandergucht, who had less than half of the lanx to work with.
NB: Greenhalgh strongly denies this, arguing that the cost of such coins would have been prohibitive, the necessity is nonexistent since alloys can be (and are) mixed by counterfeiters, and that he was not willing to consider, let alone engage in, the 'wanton destruction of thousands of ancient artefacts'.