treasure

As an enthusiastic history buff I am regularly excited by these stories of real treasure turning up in rural settings. This story tells us:

A coin expert said his eyes lit up when he saw 12 “rare” medieval gold coins, discovered with 616 silver pennies hidden in the wake of the Black Death.

The hoard was found during a metal detecting rally at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire in April 2019.

British Museum curator Barrie Cook said there had been only 12 known examples of the 1346 and 1351 Edward III gold nobles before the 2019 finds.

The coins have been declared treasure by Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court.

The hoard was unearthed by seven detectorists during Spring Detectival 2019, as first reported by the Bucks Free Press.

Dr Cook said the pandemic delayed identification, while he was also faced by the puzzle of whether he was looking at two separate hoards – one of gold coins and one of silver – and “until I look at them in detail, I couldn’t make that judgement”.

He is now convinced the same “poor bloke or woman – it could have been a woman – put this very large sum of money in a hiding place and couldn’t go back to it, so probably died”.