Michael Fabricant is supporting The Art Fund’s fundraising campaign to save the Staffordshire Hoard and is calling on residents of Staffordshire to donate to ensure the hoard is kept in the midlands.

Britain’s leading art charity, The Art Fund, has launched a public campaign to raise the £3.3million needed to save the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found on UK soil. The treasure is made up of over 1,500 items of gold, silver and precious stones that are believed to date back to the 7th Century.

No Anglo-Saxon collection of this size has ever before been found. Historians say it will shed significant new light into the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, answering many questions about the lives of the Anglo-Saxon people, and giving an understanding of the region known as the kingdom of Mercia – one of Britain’s largest and most aggressive kingdoms, which stretched from the Humber to London.

The charity has until 17 April to raise the money, or it may be sold on the open market. If the hoard is saved, it will go on display at museums in the West Midlands, and could be loaned elsewhere so that visitors from all over the UK – and beyond – can marvel at the unparalleled treasures it contains.

Michael said: "I understand that some of this huge hoard will be put on display in Lichfield as well as in Birmingham and Stoke on Trent. It would have been fantastic to have had the whole hoard kept in Lichfield or Hammerwich, but with the cost of the Hoard being well over £3 million, and the cost of converting premises even more, sadly that makes it a non-starter."

Readers can show their support by donating to the campaign in one of the following ways:

• through the official campaign website at www.artfund.org/hoard

• by telephone on 0844 415 4004

• or by cheque to The Art Fund, Freepost LON 17186, PO BOX 2003, Kirkcaldy, KY2 6BR