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Irish cardinal hoarding silver for a time (4,3)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

iron age

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'a time' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to time as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?

'irish cardinal hoarding silver' is the wordplay.
'irish' becomes 'IR' (abbreviation).
'cardinal' becomes 'one' (a cardinal number).
'hoarding' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'silver' becomes 'Ag' (Ag is the chemical symbol for silver).
'one' placed around 'ag' is 'onage'.
'ir'+'onage'='IRON AGE'

'for' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for iron age that I've seen before include "Period in the history of man - a region (anag)" , "Period from about 1100 BC" , "It followed the Bronze Age" , "Period when metal tools were developed" , "Time of the spread of metal weapons, tools etc" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.
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