Late-17th-century Busby memorial ring heads to Noonans auction

A gold ring found near Catforth, Lancashire, is heading to Noonans in Mayfair with a history that reaches Westminster Abbey and the Choir pavement where Dr Richard Busby is buried. The late-17th-century memorial piece carries a skull motif, floral engraving and traces of black enamel, making it one of the more intimate survivals of mourning jewelry now back on the market.

Amanda Parker found the ring in August 2024 after her daughter and partner, both experienced detectorists, introduced her to metal detecting. Her first reaction was that she had uncovered a wedding band, after spotting what she described as a “glint of gold” in a field. Further examination turned the find into something far rarer: a memorial ring tied to Richard Busby, the Westminster School headmaster who held the post from 1638 until his death in 1695.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme read the inscription as “Ri Busby STP ob 5 Ap 95 aet 89,” a line that places the ring squarely in 1695. Westminster School records show that Busby left money in his will for remembrance rings “in the remembrance of me,” and that 90 foliate rings were produced in all, with about 20 made with a skull motif. The ring’s design fits that tradition of memento mori jewelry, where gold, enamel and emblematic imagery were used to keep a name alive after death.

Noonans disclaimed the piece as Treasure before sale and placed it in its Jewellery, Silver & Objects of Vertu auction, estimating it at £2,000 to £3,000, about $3,000. The London auction house also noted that the sale included Busby’s portrait and a Westminster Abbey tomb reference in the catalogue, underscoring how tightly the ring is bound to its paper trail as well as its metalwork.

For gold jewelry, that combination of survival, authorship and institutional record is the point. A ring made to memorialize a 17th-century schoolmaster still carries value because it can be traced, described and retold with unusual precision, from the skull on its face to the Abbey burial beneath the choir floor.