Two men have been arrested on suspicion of a burglary at Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru – St Fagans National Museum of History near Cardiff.
The police received a report of a burglary at the museum at around 12.30am on Monday 6 October. Several items, including Bronze Age gold jewellery, were stolen from a display case.
The men aged 43 and 50 from Northampton were arrested this afternoon and are in custody in Northamptonshire. Searches are continuing for the stolen items.
Detective Inspector Bob Chambers from South Wales Police, said: “These two arrests are a hugely significant development in the investigation.
“We would like to thank the museum for their continued support, Northamptonshire Police, and members of the public who responded to our appeal for information.”
An Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales spokesperson said: “We are pleased to hear this significant development in the investigation. We are hugely grateful to South Wales Police for the speed in which they have responded to this incident and will continue to work with them on their ongoing enquiries.
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"Once again, we’d like to thank our staff, the local community and the wider public for their support whilst we have been responding to this incident.”
The objects were on display in the Wales is... gallery. The museum said it was "grateful to the staff members who were on duty overnight, followed protocol and who were thankfully uninjured during the incident".
Anyone with information is asked to contact South Wales Police via the following channels quoting 2500319252:
- Live Chat
- Via the website
- Call 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
St Fagans Museum of National History is the host venue for this week's Museums Association (MA) annual conference. The conference is going ahead as planned.
A statement from the MA said: “The Museums Association is extremely sorry to hear the news of the break-in and theft at Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru – St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff. We know this is a much-loved institution in Wales and internationally, and we hope that items can be recovered as soon as possible.
“Delegates to our annual conference are very much looking forward to exploring the site and meeting hundreds of attendees from across the UK, and we have been working hard with colleagues at Amgueddfa Cymru to make sure that everything is running smoothly and will be ready to welcome everyone onto the site for the conference.”
Around 3 years ago, the Celtic museum in a nearby village, close to where I live in Germany, lost a valuable hoard of ancient gold coins to sophisticated thieves, who cut through Internet cabling to slow down any efforts to contact police after breaking into the premises that were rather naively, inadequately protected anyway.
The theft was not the first of its kind in the country apparently, since a similar break-in had occurred in Dresden, albeit decades earlier. One would think that thereafter, every museum in the country would sit up & notice their own valuable treasures & realise that these could well be a target, now & in the future.
Since the theft of my village museum’s Celtic coins however, there have been more break-ins elsewhere in the world, including this theft at yet another small museum with a valuable GOLD treasure, seemingly up for grabs & in the face of what has emerged about the theft & sale of valuable objects from the British Museum, unnoticed for decades.
I just wonder how news of just one theft does not alert every museum with valuable treasure, anywhere in the world, to the fact that theirs, small though it might be, but worth a fortune, could yet be a target for thieves, so certain obvious precautions ought to be taken to guarantee its tenure on the premises, under what passes for a very effective lock & key, these days.
Given the current economic climate, it’s definitely not paranoid to expect that such valuables would be ‘of interest’ to thieves & not just paintings by the big names in Art museums & galleries.
The loss of this treasure is not just tragic for the museums concerned, but also for the public who pay to view the artifacts & for the small communities, home to these museums, off the beaten tourist track, as they are, including the museum in my German village, which have no other money-spinning attractions to recommend them.
It all smacks of gross negligence & a highly irresponsible “wait & see” approach by museum authorities, especially in today’s greedy world & utter disinterest in values, other than monetary.
If insurance premiums are too high, the treasure ought to be moved to bigger museums which can afford the necessary security, or the State ought to spend far more money safeguarding its cultural treasures. A country with such deplorable disrespect for its cultural heritage is not worth living in.
Sorry – I have to disagree with the above comment. Museums are under-funded and under-staffed with underpaid workers giving their all to protect some of the nation’s most important heritage. That heritage, along with the institutions and people that care for it, has had a rough time over recent years. The ‘museum authorities’ have at times been the only people trying to hold the line – it’s heroic, rather than negligence. We need to value our culture and heritage as a nation, not blame the few people who are looking after it…