HIDDEN HOARDS

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1940, Page 8

HIDDEN HOARDS

REVEALED BY WAR WORK Workmen in England were dismantling a signpost at Little Chesterford, near Saffron Walden, as part of the plan to foil parachutists, when beneath the post they found a gleaming pile of silver. It had been buried there by a burglar forty years ago, after he had raided one of the houses in the neighbourhood. War is bringing a great deal of forgotten wealth to light in similar fashion. A Nazi bomb struck a house in Lyons, France. It didn’t do much damage, but a wainscot cracked open —and pouring from the wall came a stream of golden louis which may have been concealed by a French aristocrat in 1793. When Richard Eisles, of Guildford, was excavating in his garden for an Anderson shelter, his pick caught in something. He suspected an old tin, and was about to strike again when a curious ghostly doubt crept over him. Removing the earth more carefully, he discovered a valuable piece of four-teenth-century church pewter plate. I Dealers have already offered large sums for it, but have been refused. One day, Mr. Eisles hopes, his discovery will have a place of honour in the new Guildford Cathedral, now in course of building. Trench diggers, similarly, have already made a rich haul, ranging from Roman pennies and later common coins to sovereigns. One man digging trenches in York last September/found a stoneless ring which, after a glance, he flung aside. Then he caught a sparkle of red and found a ruby hidden in the earth. It was worth several pounds and the ring was of silver.

In the rich-hued red clay of Kent, gold has been found by excavators at work on a Government camp. Work on the camp was actually held up while experts tested the soil to decide whether Kent could become another Klondike. The samples showed the presence of a half-ounce of gold in every ton of earth, together with some 20 ounces of silver per ton of clay. Tom Tiddler’s ground indeed—but the experts decided the metal was not present over a large enough area to justify commercial mining. Even the war-time scrap salvage schemes have yielded treasure. Old brass, for instance, thrown out as rubbish, proved in one instance to be ■fifteenth-century work, worth about 200 times its scrap value in the sale room.