VIRGIN LONDON

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 9 April 1927, Page 11

VIRGIN LONDON

Hr LSTORY may in part be rewritten—certainly it will be enormously enrich- =. ed —by the discovery that has been made in London of a piece of virgin ground, the only virgin soil in London, and, possibly the only virgin ground to be found in any cities of the world. It is a sjnall tract of land that has never been buided on, containing 'in depth, fifteen feet of solid history, dating from about the time 10,000 8.C.; it stands behind Nevill’s Court, by Fetter Lane, concealed from sight by unusually high hoardings, on the property of the Goldsmiths' Company, adjoining the old Moravian Chapel. The story of the discovery, and the. subsequent excavations, constitute one of the quietest as well as one of the most thrilling romances of,the City of London. Almost secretively, the excavations have been going on behind the hoardings; and the discoveries in the earth already made date from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Iron Ages, continuously up till Saxon times, about 800 A.D., when there occurs a curious gap in the discoveries until about the thirteenth century, from which time there has been exhumed an extraordinary wealth of historic relics. The briefest summary of the many remarkable discoveries made includes a flint from the Paleolithic age, re-sharpened in the Neolithic age; part of a sword and sheath, variously identified as belonging to the latter part of the Iron age, and—the chief prize of all the treasures exhumed—a complete and exquisite Cretan jewel, recognised as part of a collar, and thought to have been brought over by the Phoenicians when they came to trade with the early Britons. The catalogue of the findings is almost endless, ranging as they do from prehistoric times to two and three centuries ago. The discovery of the ground was an accident. Towards the end of the war, Mr Hugh Septimus Gordon, a mining engineer, applied to the Goldsmiths’ Comany to rent this piece of waste ground for “allotment” purposes. “I wanted the exercise of a little digging,” he said, “and I had turned over a few spades

SOIL NEVER BUILT UPON

YIELDS TREASURE TO ANTIQUARIANS

of soil when 1 discovered the medallion” (the medallion is a piece of beautifully vivid blue Roman pottery). “It was not long before I found, by the lay of the land, and the nature of the soil, that 1 had, in fact, come upon a piece of virgin soil.” Since this lime, Mr. Gordon has devoted every spare moment of the woj'k of excavation, with the enthusiastic support of the British Museum, the Royal Historical Society, 'and the Goldsmiths’ Company, to whom the ground belongs. Mr. Gordon has ibored, drilled, and ceaselessly dug up the soil, sifting every atom with infinite patience, setting aside his likely “finds,” which are later washed, re-examined, pored over by various historical experts, and then added to the amazing collection in Nevill’s Court. “’When I have completed the digging, which with luck, should be in three years, I shall, of course, hand over the collections to where they rightfully belong,” he said. Apart from the prehistoric and ancient relics, Mr. Gordon’s collection is notable for innumerable clay pipes dug up, composing a real history of smoking since the discovery of tobacco.; a rare coin, stamped with St. George; a perfect and complete pottery plate from Cromwellian times; vases, plates, beads, pins from ancient Britain, which are the size of sixinch nails; and the earliest attempts at ena-mel-ware.^ ‘ 1 There is no knowing what we may find. ’ ’ said Mr. Gordon. “Almost anything is likely to turn up in these layers of history, which . might well contain a story from 10,000 years before Christ.” A little drama is added to the situation bv the fact that the London County Council, with the consent of the Goldsmiths’ Company, may at any moment stop excavations by releasing plans, drawn up, for continuing some buildings right through the old court, thus abolishing Nevill’s Court, and carrying a main way through to Fleet Street. Meanwhile, however, the excavation goes on, in. spite of this Sword of Damocles over the heads o.f the diggers.