Herbert Samuel Toms, one of Brighton Museum’s most influential curators, was a keen folklorist. In his 42 years as the museum’s Curator of Archaeology, he amassed a fascinating collection of ‘lucky stones’ and research regarding their use.
This photograph was catalogued, digitised and repacked in Brighton Museum’s MuseumLab today. Captioned ‘Photograph of “Shepherds’ Crowns” on window-sill of cottage at Patching near Worthing’, it displays one such custom that was still practised across southern England during Toms’s lifetime. Shepherds’ crowns are ornate conically-shaped fossil sea urchins that include species of Micraster, Echinocorys and Conulus. Often found in chalky soils, they would be ploughed up by farm labourers and placed on the windowsills of houses, bringing good luck to their inhabitants.
