Treasure from the 17th century discovered during renovation of a country house

• The renovation of a 17^th About 100 coins from the time of the First English Civil War were excavated in a 1st century English longhouse.
• The coins were recently sold at auction and fetched around $75,000.
• The owners made their discovery when they lowered the floor of the farmhouse.

In a remarkable discovery, a couple renovating their farm in West Dorset, England, accidentally unearthed a hoard of 17th-century coins.

The find was made nearly five years ago when the couple were digging deeper to increase the headroom in their longhouse at South Poorton Farm. Robert Fooks struck a glazed ceramic bowl with his pickaxe, revealing around 100 coins dating to the First English Civil War.

The “Poorton Coin Hoard,” as it was called, contained gold coins of James I and Charles I, as well as silver half-crowns, shillings and sixpence from the times of Elizabeth I, Phillip and Mary. The collection was recently sold at Duke’s Auction House for around $75,000.

“One evening,” Betty Fooks said The guard“I was digging with a pickaxe with the kids and my husband when he called and said they had found something. He put all the coins in a bucket.”

The couple reported their find and sent the coins to the British Museum for cleaning and identification. Experts there explained to the Fooks that the coins had probably all been hidden at some point, sometime between 1642 and 1644, in the midst of the chaos of the English Civil War.

That’s true, said Waseem Ahmed, a PhD student in history at University College London specialising in 17th-century British political history, Experience science liveAt this time, Dorset was a strategic location for troop movements during the war that ended with the victory of the Parliamentary Alliance and the capture – and eventual execution – of King Charles I.

People hid their valuables to protect them from confiscation by opposing forces. “If you were a royalist or suspected royalist, your possessions could be confiscated by the parliamentary side and vice versa,” Dorset said.

The war left remnants of its chaos buried for over 400 years. “If we hadn’t lowered the ground, they would still be hidden there,” said Betty Fooks The guard“I assume the person intended to get it back but never had the chance.”

Now the Poorton coin hoard adds another piece to the historical puzzle of a nation once rocked by civil war.