CHANGE IN IRELAND

A lthough we can say that coins, as we understand the word today, were not struck in Ireland until a few years prior to AD1000, we can also point to a strong likelihood that the gold for many of the first coins struck more than a thousand years earlier (c. 100 BC) in what we now call England came from ancient alluvial gold found in Ireland. The ancient Irish Celts used the same sources to obtain gold for their magnificent neck torcs and ceremonial weaponry, as well as for casting small circular bands of gold often referred to as ring money. Those bands, along with cattle, probably served as bullion wealth among the Celtic Irish aristocracy.

If we now move forward in time to AD 995