# The Cheapside Hoard > Unrecorded London goldsmiths and jewellers, with imported and reused stones - Objects range from the first century BC to about 1640; the assemblage was buried between 1640 and 1666 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/cheapside-hoard-goldsmiths/the-cheapside-hoard/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-15 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded London goldsmiths and jewellers, with imported and reused stones - **Date:** Objects range from the first century BC to about 1640; the assemblage was buried between 1640 and 1666 - **Medium:** Enamelled gold, silver, and set and unset gemstones: Colombian emerald, Indian diamond, Sri Lankan and Burmese sapphire, ruby and spinel, Persian turquoise, amethyst, garnet, peridot, opal, agate, carnelian, chalcedony, rock crystal and pearl - **Dimensions:** Approximately 500 objects; individual pieces range from finger rings to enamelled chains over a metre long - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Elizabethan and Jacobean, c. 1560-1650 - **Current location:** London Museum (formerly the Museum of London); the collection has been in storage since the Barbican site closed in December 2022 and is not currently on public display. A dedicated Goldsmiths' Gallery at the museum's new Smithfield site is scheduled to open 28 November 2026 with, per the museum's own announcement, the fullest display of the hoard ever assembled. A small number of pieces remain held by the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary On 18 June 1912 workmen breaking up a cellar floor at the corner of Cheapside and Friday Street in the City of London struck a decayed wooden box holding roughly five hundred pieces of late Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery and unset gemstones. It is the largest hoard of its kind known anywhere, and it is the only surviving body of English jewellery of that period that was never broken up and refashioned.It is also, in provenance terms, the purest problem this archive has recorded. The finders are unnamed. No inventory was taken at the find spot. No coroner's inquest was held and the hoard was never declared treasure trove, so no legal process produced a document. The material reached the museum in parcels and handkerchiefs over the following weeks, bought from the workmen by a pawnbroker who paid in cash and beer. Nobody knows who owned it, why it went into the ground, or why it was never taken out again.A hoard with no owner tests every method this publication uses. There is no chain of title to grade, so the evidence has to come from the objects themselves: a chipped intaglio bearing a badge that did not exist before 1640, fire damage that puts the burial no later than 1666, and roughly four thousand missing pearls that rotted in the soil and are now recorded only as empty settings. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1st century BC to c. 1640-between 1640 and 1666** Unidentified. Probably a working jeweller or syndicate of jewellers in Cheapside `[unknown]` (accumulation) No owner has ever been identified. The assemblage was formed over an unknown period and includes Ptolemaic, Byzantine and Renaissance material alongside jewels of the 1630s. The freehold of the site belonged to the Goldsmiths' Company, but the properties were let, sublet and sub-sublet, in large part to immigrant craftsmen, and the occupancy cannot be reconstructed. - **between 1640 and 1666-1912** None. In the ground `[documented]` (concealment) Buried in a wooden box in a brick-lined cellar beneath a chalk floor. The dating window is fixed at its lower end by the Stafford intaglio of 1640 and at its upper end by fire damage associated with the Great Fire of 1666. The site was rebuilt in brick from about 1670. Nobody returned for it, and no contemporary record of the loss has been found. - **18 June 1912-1912** Unnamed demolition workmen `[documented]` (discovery) Found by a workman clearing the cellar of tenement houses 30 to 32 Cheapside during demolition. The finder was never named and gave no account. Fellow workmen are reported to have pocketed material at the find spot. No inventory, plan or photograph of the deposit was made. - **1912** George Fabian Lawrence, known as Stony Jack, pawnbroker and antiquities dealer `[documented]` (purchase) Lawrence bought the material from the workmen under a standing arrangement in which he paid cash or beer for finds. It reached him piecemeal in parcels and handkerchiefs over the following weeks. He had been appointed inspector of excavations at the London Museum in the same year. No purchase figure for the Cheapside material is published in the sources consulted, and no coroner's inquest was held, so no sworn record of the transfer exists. - **1914-1976** London Museum, Guildhall Museum and British Museum `[disputed]` (division) The hoard was split between institutions and the published counts do not agree. Forsyth records 20 items going to the British Museum in 1914, with the bulk divided between the London Museum and the Guildhall Museum in 1916. The London Museum's own published account gives 25 pieces at the British Museum and 5 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Both figures are carried here. The London Museum and Guildhall Museum merged in 1976 to form the Museum of London, reuniting the two main portions. - **1976-present** Museum of London, renamed the London Museum, with pieces in the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum `[documented]` (institutional holding) The great majority of the hoard is held by the London Museum. At least one object, an enamelled gold chain of lovers' knots, is displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum as Cheapside Hoard material. Items said to be from the hoard have continued to surface: Lawrence's son presented two undocumented fancy-cut amethysts to the museum in 1927. - **2022-28 November 2026 (scheduled)** London Museum `[documented]` (storage pending relocation) The Museum of London's Barbican site, which displayed the hoard, closed in December 2022 for the institution's move to a new site at Smithfield's former General Market. The London Museum and the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths announced in 2026 that the hoard will be the centrepiece of a new, Goldsmiths'-funded 'Goldsmiths' Gallery' at the Smithfield site, opening 28 November 2026, described by the museum as the fullest display of the hoard ever assembled. The Goldsmiths' Foundation has pledged GBP 10 million toward the new museum; this figure is for the museum project as a whole, not the gallery alone, and no separate gallery-specific figure was found. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - No object from the Cheapside Hoard has been offered at public auction. The hoard passed from the finders to a dealer and from the dealer to museums, and it has been in institutional hands since 1914. No purchase price, insurance value or probate valuation for the hoard or any part of it is published in the sources consulted. Any figure a reader encounters for what the Cheapside Hoard is worth is an estimate made without a market test. ## Open questions - Who owned the hoard? No name has ever been proposed on documentary evidence, and the occupancy of 30 to 32 Cheapside cannot be reconstructed because of successive subletting. - Why was it buried, and why was it never recovered? The 1640 to 1666 window contains the Civil War, the Great Plague and the Great Fire, and no document links the deposit to any of them. - How many objects were taken at the find spot and never reached Lawrence? Fellow workmen are reported to have pocketed material, and items have continued to surface for a century. - What did Lawrence pay for the hoard, and what did the museums pay him? No figure is published in the sources consulted. - Why was no coroner's inquest held in 1912? Under the common-law doctrine of treasure trove a deliberately concealed hoard of gold and silver was Crown property, and the freeholder, the Goldsmiths' Company, did not assert a claim either. - Do the published counts of pieces at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum reconcile? Published figures of 20 and 25 for the British Museum, and 5 for the V and A, sit unreconciled in the literature. - Is the hoard on public display now, and where? The Museum of London closed its London Wall site and is reopening as the London Museum at West Smithfield; the display status of the hoard at the time of writing is not confirmed in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Robert Weldon and Cathleen Jonathan, 'The Museum of London's Extraordinary Cheapside Hoard', Gems and Gemology, Fall 2013, Vol. 49, No. 3. Includes extended quotation of Hazel Forsyth and Sharon Ament, and personal communications from Forsyth dated 2013. - [2] London Museum (formerly Museum of London), 'The Cheapside Hoard', collections and London Stories page. - [3] Hazel Forsyth, London's Lost Jewels: The Cheapside Hoard (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2013). Cited here at second hand through the Gems and Gemology account and museum publicity; TERTIARY USE, to be replaced with direct citation from the printed volume. - [4] London Museum, press release, 'London Museum in Smithfield will open its doors on 28 November 2026', confirming the Goldsmiths' Gallery display of the Cheapside Hoard. - [5] The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, 'Goldsmiths' Gallery will bring the Cheapside Hoard to new audiences at London Museum from 28 November', confirming a GBP 10 million pledge from the Goldsmiths' Foundation toward the new museum. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.