the largest hoard medieval coins ever found britain

navigate by keyword : 15th 1966 ancestors area aristocratic assesses battle bbc britain british building buried century chain civil coinage coins contemporary dating deposited detected discovered display eliminate england english episode equivalent experts face factions fishpool fleeing found gardens gold haste henry hexham hoard important largest lengths light listed london medieval meet museum nottinghamshire panel perhaps pieces profiled reign room roses series site special stages summer television time treasures unearthed value voted war winter workmen

The largest hoard of medieval coins ever found in Britain. Royalty Free Stock Photo

The largest hoard of medieval coins ever found in Britain.

In 1966 the Fishpool Hoard of 1,237 15th century gold coins, four rings and four other pieces of jewellery, and two lengths of gold chain was discovered by workmen on a building site near present-day Cambourne Gardens, in Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire, England, an area that was then known as Fishpool. the hoard was probably buried in haste at some time between winter 1463 and summer 1464, perhaps by someone fleeing south after the Battle of Hexham in May 1464, in the first stages of England`s civil war between aristocratic factions, the War of the Roses. The Fishpool Hoard, on display in Room 40 in the British Museum, London, was listed in 2003 among Our Top Ten Treasures, a special episode of BBC Television series Meet the Ancestors that profiled the ten most important treasures ever unearthed in Britain as voted by a panel of experts from the British Museum. The British Museum assesses the face value of the hoard when deposited, about ÃÂ£400, would be equivalent to around ÃÂ£300,000 today. The makeup of the coinage, as well as dating the hoard, showed that the light coinage of 1412 did not entirely eliminate earlier gold coins. Among the coins were detected some nearly contemporary gold-plated counterfeit coins from the reign of Henry VI .