A FORMER librarian of The National Library of Wales has made a renewed call for the Mold Gold Cape to be returned to north east Wales.

Discovered by workmen quarrying for stone in a burial mound in 1833, the solid sheet-gold object dates back to the European Bronze Age.

Several calls have been made for it to be brought back to the town previously.

Read more:

Hollywood star plays banjo on track about Mold cape

Now, former librarian of The National Library of Wales Andrew Green has said the British Museum - which bought the item in the 1830s - should return it to the area it originates from. 

The artefact, beaten into a sheet from a single gold ingot, is currently on display as part of the museum’s World of Stonehenge Exhibit. 

Green told BBC Radio Wales: “It’s a totally spectacular object, one of the greatest bronze age objects of Europe, I’d say. 

The Leader:

How the Mold Gold Cape looks once worn. PIC: British Museum

“Mold isn’t that far from the Great Orme which was the biggest Bronze Age copper mine, in Europe, of the time and there were lots of other bronze age burials and objects in the area so north east Wales, north Wales in particular, was really a centre of Bronze Age culture.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why the cape should come back to Wales.” 

Green said when the cape was discovered there were no public museums in Wales and at present visitors to the British Museum have to pay £20 to see the artifact as it is part of the Stonehenge exhibition. 

The cape was last displayed in Wales, on loan, in Wrexham and Cardiff in 2013.