When a couple living in an 18th-century North Yorkshire village house embarked on a renovation project, they were willing to spend money and redoing the old kitchen floor was on the list. But before they could get past the first phase of removing the old floorboards, renovation workers stumbled upon a trove of rare coins, amounting to more than 260 coins.
Ironically, what they found under the “antique” kitchen floor increased their fortune to $280,000 (281,000 euros)! That’s the rough estimate at auction value of the cache of rare coins found under their kitchen floor, which is now being sold by Spink & Son, an auction house nearly as old as the coins in archive in North Yorkshire.
The North Yorkshire coin hoard, partly pictured here, is tucked into this salt-glazed earthenware cup. ( Spink & Son )
A trove of rare coins under the 18th century kitchen floor
In 2019, in the village of Ellerby, in the historic house where a North Yorkshire couple had lived for 10 years, an early kitchen floor renovation led to a rare coin hoard. According to Smithsonian Magazine, workers lifting floorboards encountered an obstruction that they initially believed was an electrical cable buried in the concrete. Further investigation revealed a glazed earthenware cup no larger than a soda can buried 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) underground. When they heard coins rattling inside, they emptied the contents and found a truly rare and unusual stash of coins, Livescience reported.
The rare coin archive includes more than 260 coins, dating from 1610 to 1727 AD. A Brazilian coin that is notable because it circulated in England in the 1720s.
Interestingly, in the cache there are two coins that have a greater value because they have mint errors. A George I guinea pig from 1720 with two tails instead of the king’s head on one side has been valued by the auction house at around $4,590 (4,610 euros) . And a Charles II guinea from 1675 has the king’s name in Latin misspelled (Craolvs instead of Carolvs) and is expected to fetch around $1,725 (1,733 euros).
Metro.co quoted Gregory Edmund, an auctioneer at Spink & Son, as saying: “This is a fascinating and extremely important discovery. It is extremely rare for British gold coin hoards to come onto the market. The discovery of more than 260 coins is also one of the largest finds in the UK archaeological record. They are not perfect coins, they are coins that have had a difficult life. It was a wonderful and truly unexpected discovery from such a modest find. As a coin expert with many years of experience, I cannot recall a similar discovery in living memory and it is therefore a huge privilege to be able to document and explore this archive precisely for the benefit of future generations.”
Edmund added that the remarkable rare coin archive accurately reflects the £50 and £100 coins used in 1610-1727 AD in England.
Thanks to a casting error, this 1720 George I guinea clock has two “tail” edges. It could be the most valuable coin discovered beneath the kitchen floor of a house in the North Yorkshire village. ( Spink & Son )
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Experts were able to determine who the original owner of the coin was. CNN quotes Spink & Son’s press release: “The coins almost certainly belong to the Fernley-Maisters, Joseph and Sarah, who married in 1694”.
The Fernley-Maisters were a wealthy trading family from the 16th to the 18th centuries and many members of the great clan lived in the area. They traded iron ore, wood and coal from the Baltic countries. Beginning in the early 1700s, over many generations, many family members served in parliament.
After Joseph and Sara died, the family largely faded away and that is probably why the coins were never recovered despite being reasonably accessible.
But the real question is why were they hidden in the first place?
“Joseph and Sarah were clearly distrustful of the newly established Bank of England, the ‘paper money’ and even the gold coins of their day as they (chose to) hold a lot of coins dating back to the English Civil War and before that. Why they never recovered the coins when they were so easy to find right under the original 18th-century floorboards is an even bigger mystery, but it’s a damn piggy bank ,” CNN quoted Edmund as saying.
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Fortunately for the couple who now “own” the coin hoard, the coins are not specifically classified as “treasure” under British law and they will have ownership of all but the coins. Brazilian coin. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the coins found in July 2019 have now been officially rejected because the youngest of them, a George I guinea coin from 1727, was less than 300 years old at the time. detected .
The coins will be auctioned in October 2022 and the total proceeds will more than cover the costs of all the renovations to the couple’s historic home!
Top photo: A couple living in a historic house in a village in North Yorkshire, England found a trove of rare coins, more than 260 of them, under the kitchen floor they were repairing, and never Soon they will receive a small fortune from the auctioneer. Source: Spink & Son
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