The fork in the road

Once viewed with suspicion, forks remained the preserve of royalty until nearly 200 years ago. Matthew Dennison takes a stab at the king of cutlery, which changed the way we eat

- Matthew Dennison

AMID a hoard of silver coins discovered in the Wiltshire village of Sevington was a two-pronged silver fork identified by archaeologists as Saxon, pre-dating the Norman Conquest by at least two centuries. Its burial alongside valuable coins points to its status for its first owner.

In the 9th century, a fork was a rarity in English life, evidence perhaps of overseas trading links. Sources suggest forks were used in this period by Persian nobles, a habit that subsequently spread across the Byzantine Empire, including to the Byzantine princess who, in 1004, married the Doge of Venice and earned round condemnation for her use of a two-pronged gold fork to spear chunks of food cut up for her by attendant eunuchs. St Peter Damian explained her subsequent death from the plague as God’s judgement on her vanity, a view apparently based on her table manners and eating habits. But in Wiltshire villages?

Forks are the johnnies-come-lately of British dining tables. Although an inventory of the personal effects of Edward I, made on the King’s death in 1307, included ‘six silver forks, one gold fork, and a pair of table knives with handles of crystal’, centuries would pass before Edward’s countrymen followed the royal example. In 1559, for example, only 12 ‘silver and gilt’ forks were listed in Elizabeth I’s possession; a later inventory records ‘thre[sic] of them Broken’ and no replacements. The earliest known hallmarked silver fork made in an English workshop bears London assay office marks for 1632–33.