Reunited cross to go on display

The reunited altar cross complete with enamel plaque (centre)

A newly-restored altar cross is going on display at the British Museum for the first time in 100 years.

The medieval cross and the enamel plaque which used to be at its centre have only recently been reunited.

The cross was hidden in a storeroom at the museum because it was incomplete, until painstaking research succeeded in finding its original centrepiece.

Plaques were often removed from crosses in the nineteenth century to satisfy the demands of collectors.

The enamel plaque attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler in the closing stages of World War II, who wanted the piece in a museum.

But the project was never realised and in 1971 became part of Edmund de Unger's collection which he donated to the British Museum.

It's an absolute joy James Robinson of the British Museum on the cross's reunification

It was only through going through old sales catalogues that a researcher noticed the jewel's similarity to the cross it was originally part of.

"It's so rare for the individual parts of an object that has been dismembered in that way to come back together," said James Robinson, the museum's curator of medieval collections.

"It's an absolute joy," he added.

Missing

But the cross remains incomplete, because an enamel plaque of St John the Baptist is still missing from the right arm of the piece.

The cross - complete with central plaque - will go on permanent display at the British Museum on 13 February.

Curators are still looking for information about the whereabouts of the other missing enamel.

Medieval altar crosses that were pulled apart for Victorian collectors ensured that pieces were sold across the world and scattered far and wide.

Reassembling the items as they were originally intended is often a painstaking and difficult task.