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Gold coin hoard in a cup found under kitchen floor
The History Blog ^
| 9/5/2022
| History Blog
Posted on 09/06/2022 7:37:38 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Gold coin hoard in a cup found under kitchen floor
A couple in North Yorkshire hit the kind of jackpot every history nerd has dreamed of: they discovered an early 18th century coin hoard buried under the floorboards of their kitchen. With more than 260 gold coins dating to between 1610 and 1727, it is one of the largest hoards of English 18th century coins ever found.
They found the hoard in July 2019 after pulling up the kitchen floors in their 18th century home. Six inches beneath the concrete underfloor, they
spotted what they thought was an old electrical wire but turned out to be the mouth of a salt-glazed earthenware cup about the size of a soda can with a broken handle. Packed inside this smallish beaker were 264 gold coins.
The couple contacted the London auction firm Spink & Son and their experts authenticated the coin hoard. They also researched the home’s history and identified the likely hoarders: wealthy Hull merchant Joseph Fernley and his wife Sarah Maister. Joseph died in 1725, Sarah in 1745, so it seems Sarah buried the hoard after her husband’s death. Secure banks and paper money were available when she chose the floorboards over a safety deposit box — the Bank of England had been founded in 1694, the year Joseph and Sarah got married — but clearly they mistrusted financial institutions in favor of collecting and caching gold currency.
The Fernley-Maisters may have had some grounds for skepticism. The Bank of England was established in order to raise a loan of £1.2 million to the government of King William III so that he could build Britain into a global naval power capable of taking on the indisputably superior French fleet. France’s navy had defeated England in the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 so soundly that it took control of the English Channel and caused a panic in Britain. The subscribers to the loan then became the Governors of the bank. For a family who built wealth by trading in goods imported from the Baltic, this probably looked like shenanigans were afoot.
The coins were well-circulated before they were collected and there is significant wear on most of them. They weren’t particularly rare either. It’s more like the collectors stashed their 50s and 100s regularly, including older ones they came across still in circulation. The rarest coin is a 1720 George I guinea which had two reverse sides (two tails, no head) because of a minting error. A 1675 Charles II guinea where the king’s name is misspelled CRAOLVS instead of CAROLVS is also notable. In face value alone, the coins are worth £100,000, but adding up their current individual market values that figure more than doubles to £250,000 ($290,000).
Unfortunately we will soon have a chance to know what price this unique hoard will go for because it is going under the hammer at Spink & Son on October 7th. Yes, the dream come true has turned into this history nerd’s nightmare. The hoard fell through yet another hole in the Treasure Act. By law, coins are declared treasure if there are two or more of them (check) and if they are at least 300 years old. The coroner’s inquest ruled that because the youngest coin was 292 years old when the hoard was unearthed in 2019, the entire hoard was less than 300 years old and therefore the property of the homeowners to dispose of as they wish. It’s heartbreaking, but every coin is being sold individually. No word on what’s happening to the earthenware cup they were stashed in.
TOPICS: Local News
KEYWORDS: coins; epigraphyandlanguage; floor; found; godsgravesglyphs; gold; hoard; kitchen; middleages; renaissance; yorkshire
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Thought I'd seen this before, but I searched and couldn't find it. If I'm wrong, Moderator, please delete immediately, sorry.
To: LibWhacker; SunkenCiv
Gold coins found in a cup under the kitchen floor? Does seem to be happening a lot lately.
2
posted on
09/06/2022 7:42:19 PM PDT
by
Larry Lucido
(Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
To: LibWhacker
To: LibWhacker
Was posted prior but your source gave information the previous did not…such as everything you posted, except for where it was found.
4
posted on
09/06/2022 7:47:58 PM PDT
by
Deaf Smith
(When a Texan takes his chances, chances will be taken that's for sure.)
To: Deaf Smith
such as everything you posted LOL, okay, thank you. :-)
To: LibWhacker
My poor grandchildren. All they are going to find is hubby’s and my initials on the 2x4 behind the sheetrock in the foyer.
6
posted on
09/06/2022 7:52:27 PM PDT
by
CFW
To: LibWhacker
Why doesn’t stuff like this ever happen to me?
7
posted on
09/06/2022 7:54:59 PM PDT
by
EvilCapitalist
(81 million votes my ass.)
To: EvilCapitalist
I’m surprised that the government didn’t seize procession of it!
8
posted on
09/06/2022 8:02:49 PM PDT
by
sjmjax
To: EvilCapitalist
Happened to me in reverse.
My brothers and I had an extensive baseball card collection starting in late 1940’s til 1970.
I was the last to leave home in 1971 to go off to school 2000 miles away. I took the baseball collection and hid them under the floorboards in the Attic to keep for the future.
I returned home 5 years later and went up to fetch the baseball cards only to find that my parents had an insulation company blow insulation into the Attic.
The cards were no longer there in the location that I hid them. No doubt, one of the insulation employees walked away with them.
I’d love to know what happened to them, guess those cards were never meant to be in the hand of Life dealt to me. For better or worse, things certainly would have been different.
Maybe the thief cashed them in for a fortune, or if karma came along to make things right.
Still bothers me to this day.
9
posted on
09/06/2022 8:08:05 PM PDT
by
dmzTahoe
To: LibWhacker
I am going to rip up the floor and find what my downstairs neighbor has.
To: Larry Lucido; LibWhacker
Thanks LL and LW.
![](https://i.imgur.com/eRHYOoK.png)
11
posted on
09/06/2022 8:27:56 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
To: LibWhacker
The last line? “It’s heartbreaking that these belong to the homeowners to sell as they wish”.
What a socialist putz.
12
posted on
09/06/2022 8:49:49 PM PDT
by
Jewbacca
(The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem.)
To: CFW
I buried a realistic ceramic skeleton myself in our flower bed.
Tied the hands together with rope, put clothes on it, a gag and a couple dozen cheap Russian aluminum bullet shells.
Figure the person who digs up my roses deserves it.
13
posted on
09/06/2022 8:53:46 PM PDT
by
Jewbacca
(The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem.)
To: Jewbacca
You misquoted……that is not what was written
.
14
posted on
09/06/2022 8:54:12 PM PDT
by
Mears
To: Mears
Sure, Poindexter. I depend on people being smart enough to understand a paraphrase. Sorry it confused you, despite being right there.
Here you go:
“The coroner’s inquest ruled that because the youngest coin was 292 years old when the hoard was unearthed in 2019, the entire hoard was less than 300 years old and therefore the property of the homeowners to dispose of as they wish. It’s heartbreaking, but every coin is being sold individually“
So exact what I said. The socialist putz is unhappy it’s private property deposed of privately.
15
posted on
09/06/2022 9:01:32 PM PDT
by
Jewbacca
(The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem.)
To: Jewbacca
You used quotation marks…….hardly paraphrasing.
.
16
posted on
09/06/2022 9:09:03 PM PDT
by
Mears
To: Jewbacca
To: LibWhacker
After my father passed early last year, we came across 54 Gold Eagles and Mapleleafs, all Proof sealed, hidden away in his basement workshop when we were cleaning out the house. In addition, we also found another almost $60K is old silver coins he had packaged and stashed. Odd thing was, none of us kids ever knew he collected coins.
To: LibWhacker
Why would anybody in the UK report something like that to the government? If there was any chance that you would get anything less than fair market value, I’d just quietly sell them off - a coin at a time if necessary and abroad if necessary.
19
posted on
09/07/2022 3:07:18 AM PDT
by
FLT-bird
To: FLT-bird
How do you know they didn’t find more than they admitted?
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