Buried Treasure

It's a hot day here in my part of the UK and I have just sent in the revisions to my latest manuscript which is a Regency historical set in London and the Arctic. It's been pretty strange writing about snow, glaciers and the Northern Lights whilst sitting here as the mercury creeps up the thermometer and the dog makes himself a nest in the shade! Anyway, today I'm writing a blog that's a little bit eccentric. Maybe the heat has gone to my head! I hope you find it interesting though. It was going to be called "things I've dug up in the garden" but in the end I decided that "buried treasure" sounded better and also meant that I could include some of the finds my neighbours have made as well as things I've discovered in the local fields.

First of all I should explain that I live in a village that is ancient. In the Domesday Book of 1086 is is called "Eissesberie" and the land belonged to Glastonbury Abbey. It was held from the Abbey by Robert D'Oilly, who was a powerful Norman baron, and by two other tenants who were Saxons known only as Alwin and Edward. There was a church and two mills. There are still two mills now although they have been converted into private houses. One of them was re-built in the 18th century. It's awe-inspiring to know that there have been mills on the same spot for almost a thousand years. There is more information about the village and it's fascinating history here at the Berkshire History site.

So with thousands of years of history beneath our feet it isn't surprising that we would find some interesting items when we are walking the dog or digging the garden. I'm no archaeologist so I haven't been able to date most of the finds but I'm fascinated by the light these throw on the history of the village and the lives of people who lived here down the centuries. Here is a selection of our finds:

A Horseshoe. We have found at least fifteen on these in the field behind the house, suggesting that people have been cultivating the fields around here for many many years. At the moment they are cutting the wheat with a combine harvester. These rusty horseshoes take us back to a time when sowing and harvesting was harder physical work. The most fascinating horseshoe we found is this tiny one that is only a few inches across. I wonder about the horse and I wonder about the owner. We have put one of the horseshoes above our cottage door for good luck and have the others by the gate.

This Victorian glass bottle is the one that I had my Wench plume in at the RWA Conference booksigning in Washington. I found it in a Victorian waste tip under a bank in the field. I think it might have contained perfume. The village pond used to be in the corner of the same field. Because the stream has been piped under the road now the pond has dried up but there are lots of pottery shards from the seventeenth and eighteenth century that were washed down and deposited there, plus other little bits and pieces such as clay pipes, and marbles that must once have belonged to the village children.

A cameo brooch like this one was found by my neighbour when he was re-designing his garden. It is incredibly delicate and beautiful. I think whoever lost this must have been very upset. Perhaps they searched and searched for it without success.

I am wondering how old this belt buckle is. I found it near a Bronze Age barrow, It's very plain but it looks as though it is made of silver. Could it be ancient - or was it mass-produced and lost in the 1980s???

And finally, my favourite find. This is A Henry VIII "Tower Mint" Penny from 1540 inscribed with HDG ROSA SINE SPIA, "Henry by the Grace of God, a rose without thorn." The one found by a friend of mine is completely unworn. It must have been lost when it was brand new. When I held it in the palm of my hand I felt awed and excited that in 1540 someone who lived in Ashbury had had a precious silver penny that had maybe fallen out of a hole in their pocket and was not found for five hundred years!

Are you a "magpie" like I am, picking up interesting objects? Have you ever found "buried treasure" either in the garden or the attic or somewhere else like the beach? Was it something old, or was it of important sentimental value or was it just quirky and interesting?

Comments

[liz m]

I am in complete coin envy. I love the Tudor period and coins, so double envy. (I also like the tiny horseshoe - maybe it was a toy for a horse crazed child's wooden horse?) Here, we can only find things less than 40 years old, because our town emerged from the swamp after the civil war. There was no native population in the area prior to that - we might find a tooth or a knuckle bone, but that's about it.

I was raised by junk dealers, so I'm from magpie genetic stock, and well versed in sifting through other's peoples remnants for the interesting or the obscure. (I walk through museums mostly yawing - had that, had a dozen of those, oh this is interesting now....) I like old photos myself, not the sort staged in the studio where you see the same wicker chair and bored expressions, but the ones taken by traveling photographers, when photography is new and everyone isn't quite sure what to do about it all. People haven't yet decided what the 'proper' way to look is so they show up as themselves and there is no 'good' picture or 'bad' picture, just this amazing thing to hand down for the first time. Until there is no one to hand it down to and it winds up in the corner of a shop where someone makes up stories about it to pass the time.

My brother amuses himself with more modern snaps, people often sell them by the box for a few dollars. I give you The Wrong Explanations Society.
http://kikaiderboy.livejournal.com/

[liz m]

Oh! Wait! I shall hog the comments today - I do have a buried treasure story! In 1923 my gg-aunt married Mr. Wright, but died five years later. (Long story involving treatable ailments and faith healer beliefs) and my atheist g-grandfather, distraught at the loss of his favorite sister, destroyed all her pictures. In the late 1990's I salvaged a derelict and cumbersome piece of furniture from family members planning to discard it, thinking I could make a project out of it. In the 1800's it had been a pianoforte, in the 1950's it was turned into a desk, and currently it was just ugly and warped.

As a gift, my husband realized the project would take a few centuries to occur, so he hired a refinisher to restore the desk to usefulness so I could at least enjoy it. The refinisher called to say that there was a design flaw that allowed items to become trapped inside the body of the desk and he was going to permanently remove the underside of the desk and use the pieces in the repair. Inside, he found two photos from the 1920's One of my grandfather and his sisters as small children, and the other? My g-great aunt in her wedding dress.

So, the perfect treasure for someone who loves vintage photos - a vintage photo of a lost and once beloved family member.

[Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens]

What a wonderful collection of "finds", Nicola. I love the Henry VIII penny, and feel the same way you do about touching something from a different era. It sends shivers up my spine imagining who held it over the years.

As a child, I used to hunt for Indian arrowheads along a nearby reservoir that had been built in the 1800s by flooding the site of an old New England village. Alas, I never found any . . .but I do have an old horseshoe or two discovered along some old riding trails. (Somehow I doubt they are old!)

I do have two very ancient Greek coins that my grandfather picked up during his travels through Europe. They may very well be fake, but I like to look at them and imagine what all they have seen.

[Louis]

Nothing as old as you found on our five acres. There is a rock with a depressed area that could have been used to grind acorns or grain by an earlier dweller.

We do have a few lovely milky quartz strips here and there on the property. have several large chunks.

As a kid in Oklahoma I did find a couple of arrowheads while wandering the woods.

[Nicola Cornick]

Liz, that's a lovely story about your great great aunt's photograph and what a wonderful thought that it was because of a design flaw in the desk that it was preserved at all!

There is something about coins, isn't there, Andrea. Maybe it's because they change hands so often that you try to imagine the people who have held them down the centuries.

[Nicola Cornick]

I love the sound of the milky quartz, Louis. Arrowheads are a wonderful find!

[Candice Hern]

I have long been envious of all those wonderful old objects you Brits find in your gardens. Having only lived in places that are relatively new, the best I could come up with is an old Coke bottle from the 1950s!

I remember once seeing a guy on the UK Antiques Roadshow who found a beautiful gold ring in his garden. I believe he thought it was Edwardian, Art Nouveau-ish. Turned out it was Saxon! I love stories like that.

And I'm very jealous of your coins. I have a few old coins that I've bought from dealers over the years, but to find one yourself, where it might have been dropped 500 years ago, is so much more special. It gives me chills just to think about it.

As for your buckle, I checked some of my buckle books (I collect shoe buckles, and many of my reference books cover all types of buckles) and it looks like it probably dates between c1570 - c1700.

[Janice]

I am intrigued by a regency set in London and the Arctic. The only other one remotely like that I can think of offhand is Frankenstein. I would like to know more :)

As for gardening finds, well, I live in a condominium complex, and, though we do have nice grounds and lots of trees, 'private' garden digging is not allowed. However, since it's on the old MGM backlot, likely you wouldn't find anything but old saddle bits & cigarette butts anyway. Maybe a few acorn hulls or fish bones from the Gabrieleno people who once lived here.

[Patricia Barraclough]

When we started renovating our current house, a 1998 victorian farm house, we realized most of the lath and plaster would have to be torn out. Between the house and the gardens we have found a few pictures, marbles, part of a victorian manicure set, porcelain doll parts, pieces of plates, puzzle pieces and three duck or geese eggs inside the flooring (still whole and in a place no bird that size could possible get). I did find an 1860's book in an old farmhouse attic.

[Annrei]

I haven't found anything by digging in the garden, but by digging through my late paternal grandmother's basement. She was a packrat, never threw a thing out.

My great-grandmother came to the United States from Ireland and she was almost on the Titanic, but became ill and missed the crossing. Her old steamer trunk was in my grandma's basement. It was massive and probably the most memorable object in grandma's basement.

I also found a book from 1898 in that basement called Girls Who Became Famous. It's on my bookshelf.

[Nicola Cornick]

Candice, thank you very much for checking your buckle books for me. That's wonderful! It's lovely picking up all this stuff but since I have no way of dating most of it I end up with more mysteries than answers.

I think people's posts here illustrate that buried treasure can be all sorts of stuff. It doesn't have to be ancient to be fascinating. And also some of the things that may be commonplace in one area might be rare in others. I told my husband about the arrowheads, for instance, and he was very excited to think of finding something like that.

Annrei, I love the sound of Girls who Became Famous! What a great title! And Pat, how wonderful to find so many artefacts telling the story of people who had previously lived in your house. I think there's a book idea in there!

[Nicola Cornick]

Janice, thank you for asking about the Arctic Book, which is called Whisper of Scandal and will be out next year. The idea came to me when I was on a cruise to Spitsbergen a couple of years ago and I read up on the history of exploration in the area at the beginning of the 19th century, particularly the attempts to reach the North Pole and the voyages to find the North East Passage. The hero of the book is an explorer who has to escort his late comrade's widow to Spitsbergen so I was able to draw on my own experiences of the place as well as on my research. I have masses of notes on the background which I'm hoping to turn into some articles and post up here and on my website in the future. I love the way that my travels give me story ideas and I'm sure lots of other writers say the same!

[liz m]

Vine is offering Scandals Of An Innocent today for review - I was surprised! (I was already given a copy for a different review site, so I went with another book) It was the first softcover romance I've seen, and they listed it respectfully as 'fiction' instead of the author who got saddled with 'american light romantic fiction'.

Hope it gets a lot of attention.

[Keira Soleore]

Nicola, first of all, when can I come visit you?

Now that, that's out of the way, let me say: I'm a collector of junk. All kinds of junk, but especially stuff that have sentimental value: gifted to me, used by someone I think of fondly, found, etc.

I would die, if I dug up something Saxon. So, if you find any of King Alfred's coins, do be sure to drop me a line. :)

[Nicola Cornick]

Thank you for letting me know about Vine, Liz. That sounds very exciting!

Keira, you are welcome any time. I'm told I do a great
"alternative" tour of the UK's finest historic sites with the emphasis very much on afternoon tea! And if I find any of Alfred's coins whilst I'm walking around Ashdown, I'll let you know!

[theo]

I'm with Keira! When can I come. I'd be no trouble at all. I'd sit outside from first light to last with a little tiny shovel and a bucket. :)

I live on the property I grew up on. My dad bought it in 1937. Before that it was a several hundred acre farm and before that, indian land. Between having no regular garbage pick up when my dad first bought here (they wouldn't pick it up until he actually had a house on the property and he built the house and lived offsite) I've found old little medicine bottles, horseshoes (he had five horses) bit and harness pieces, arrowheads, pottery, what looks like the head to a tomahawk, and dozens of other sundry bits and pieces that work their way out of the ground in the woods behind us. I'm still waiting for the complete flat head Ford engine to finish working it's way out. It's only half uncovered now...