Cheapside Hoard - London's stunning jewels and gold

For 300 years a buried treasure lay below a busy London street. No-one knew the hoard was there till workmen were demolishing a timber-framed building in Cheapside, near St Paul's Cathedral and St Mary-le-Bow.

The busin­ess had stood on the site since the C17th, but the cell­ars were older and lined with brick. The row of hous­es on the south of Cheap­side was owned by the Worshipful Co. of Gold­smiths, form­erly Lond­on’s centre of the manufacture and sale of gold and jewellery under Queen Eliz­abeth I. The shops sold of luxury goods, including jewels.

The location was probably the prem­ises of a Jac­obean gold­smith, and the hoard was thought to have been a jeweller's working stock, buried in the cellar during the En­glish Civil War (1642-6). Gold­smith's Row was dest­royed in 1666’s Great Fire of London then the build­ings were rebuilt by the Goldsmiths' Co soon after.

The workmen started to excavate the cellars with their tools  in 1912, and while they were break­ing up the floor, they noticed glitter in the soil below. They realised that they’d struck the remains of an old wooden casket, and to their immense delight a tangled heap of jewellery, chains and rings, gems and other prec­ious objects fell out. They had uncovered what is now called The Cheapside Hoard, a great cache of early jewellery and one of the most amazing recoveries from British soil.

When the hoard was cleaned, the workmen sold the items to an ant­iques dealer who frequently paid labourers cash for special finds from London building sites. The dealer was appointed by Guildhall Museum to sear­ch for new items for its collection and bec­ame Inspector of Excav­ations for the new London Museum in 1911. NB the Goldsmiths' Co. did not declare ownership of the finds, and no treas­ure trove inquest was held!

Viscount Lewis Harcourt provided the funds for the London Museum Kensington to purchase most of the Hoard in 1912, though some pieces went to the British Museum and the Guildhall Museum, 5 items were bought by the Vict­oria and Albert Museum and 25 pieces by the British Mus­eum. The ent­ire hoard of Elizabethan and early Stuart jew­ellery was brought toget­her for the first time in 100 years for a recent exhibition Cheap­side Hoard: Lon­d­on's Lost Jewels.

The Ch­eapside Hoard was special bec­ause so little jewellery of this era survived, so little information on London’s role in the inter­nat­ional gem trade in an age of global conquest and exploration was available

The hoard in its entirety represents the stock-in-trade of a working goldsmith-jewel­l­er so its presence in Cheapside is highly significant. This street was not only the prin­­cipal artery of the City, its ceremonial route and main shopping st­reet, but was also the hub of the goldsmiths’ trade. The Hoard contained a fine array of 500 dazzling jewels and gemst­ones from many parts of the world. It included topaz and amazonite from Brazil; ruby from Burma; Afghan lapis lazuli; peridot from the Red Sea; Bohemian and Hungarian opal, gar­net and amet­h­yst; sap­phires, diamonds and rub­ies from India; spinel and chrysoberyl from Sri Lanka; pearls from Ba­hrain; turquoise from Egypt and Persia; and Byzantine classical gems which had been in circulation for centuries when the Hoard was buried.

This international treasure might have been brought back to England from the East Indies in 1631, perhaps assembled by the Dutch jeweller Gerald Polman. He died en route, and his gem chest was taken by the carp­ent­er's mate on the ship who was eventually forced to surrender the box. The contents went to Ro­bert Bertie 1st Earl Lindsey, Treasurer of the East India Co. (He died at Battle of Edgehill in 1642).

Some of the display cases and portraits pr­ovided further information ab­out the gem trade, or clothing fashions of Elizabethan Eng­land. See the contemporary portraits that provided a great record of how some of the jewels on display were worn. In the por­trait of Countess Elizabeth Wriot­hesley from the National Portrait Gallery, she was wear­ing ruby or garnet earrings, like those found in the hoard. A small red intag­lio stone seal bore the arms of William How­ard 1st Viscount Staff­ord, exactly dating the burial of the hoard between his ennob­lement in Nov 1640 and the Great Fire of Lond­on in 1666 which des­t­royed the area.

Fortunately the cur­at­ors helped visitors see the size and the minute det­ail. First, large and strong magnify­ing glasses have been provided to magnify the objects. Second, around the exhibition are a number of video present­at­ions show­ing how objects were made eg pearl pendants that were worn as earrings or hair pendants. The pend­ant showed highly skilled enamelling and metalsmithing. 

See a clock set in an exquisite, large Colombian emerald crystal dated c1600. The unique round emerald had been hollowed out by the maker to hold a Swiss watch movement, and used the removed material to embellish the metalwork, Green enamel decorates various parts of the watch, for nobility.. Then cont­rast it with the green Elizabethan timepiece with the amethyst cameo of Byz­ant­ine age.

Historians want to know exactly why the Cheapside Hoard was buried and by whom. And why did the owners never return to retrieve it? Nonetheless the exhib­it­ion clarified what was known about the national and inter­nat­ional objects and the research it promoted, revealing much about crafts­manship and wealth in C16th and early C17th London.

The Hoard is not currently on display in the Museum of London. A purpose-built gallery for the permanent display of the Hoard is planned for a new museum in Smithfield, scheduled to open in 2024.

Many thanks for GIA photos.