UK - Exhibit features Cheapside Hoard, pre-1666 jewelry found buried in London cellar

The entire glittering Cheapside Hoard – hundreds of pieces of golden and gem-studded Tudor and Jacobean jewellery – is to go on display at the Museum of London next autumn, together with a possible murder mystery story, for the first time since a workman's pickaxe smashed through the brick floor of a London cellar more than a century ago.

The blow exposed one of the most spectacular buried treasures ever found, and the workmen evidently scrambled to grab every shining fragment, aware they had a ready market in an enigmatic figure known to them as Stoney Jack – famous among London navvies for buying their more interesting finds in pubs, cash down, no questions asked.

What they had found, in an old house being demolished on Cheapside, just a five-minute walk from the present museum at London Wall, was extraordinary. The hoard of almost 500 pieces was a 17th-century goldsmith's stock – worth a king's ransom then and priceless now. Like many remaining mysteries about the hoard, it is not known how much Stoney Jack paid, but a contemporary recorded that the workmen vanished on a drinking spree which lasted for months.

"Nothing in the world comes close," said Museum of London curator Hazel Forsyth, who has spent years studying the brooches and necklaces, rings and chains, pearls and rubies, scent bottles and fan holders, two carved gems which date back 1,300 years to Byzantium – and a watch set into a hollow carved out of one stupendous emerald which was originally the size of an apple.
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wfgodot said:

I, personally - just speaking for myself here - would love to have an emerald the size of an apple. Anyone else?

Click to expand...

wfgodot said:

I, personally - just speaking for myself here - would love to have an emerald the size of an apple. Anyone else?

Click to expand...