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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
Stoney Jack was a Dickensian character, a sort of
archaeological Fagin. An antiques dealer but also Inspector
of Acquisitions for the London Museum, he ran a network
of navvies trained in tap room sessions as amateur
archaeologists to bring him treasures from demolition
sites in the City. Some items were sold in his shop but
important finds he sold to the London Museum and in
this way much of the museum’s collection was built up.
Shocking? Maybe, but there wasn’t an official process for
archaeological finds until the 1970s. Stoney Jack was just
following in the footsteps of men like the circus strongman
Giovanni Belzoni who had dragged Egyptian treasures
from the sands and sold them to the British Museum a
hundred years earlier.
The pioneering and prolific journalist-come-travel-writer
HV Morton had a nose for a good story and had made
a name for himself by scooping The Times at the opening
of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Morton knew Stoney Jack:
“I cannot count the times I have been present when
navvies have appeared and passed their treasures across
the counter with a husky, “Any good to yer, guv’nor?”
I have seen handkerchiefs unknotted to reveal Roman
pins, mirrors, coins, leather, pottery and every kind of
object that can lie concealed in old and storied soil.”
Morton writes of a momentous discovery in 1912.
“I was with him one day when two navvies handed over a
heavy mass of clay found beneath a building in Cheapside.
It was like an iron football, and they said there was a lot
more of it. Sticking in the clay were bright gleams of gold.
When they had gone, we went up to the bathroom and
turned the water on to the clay. Out fell pearl earrings and
pendants and all kinds of crumpled jewellery. That was
how the famous hoard of Tudor jewellery, the Cheapside
Hoard, was discovered.”
London’s Lost Jewels: The Mystery of The Cheapside Hoard
Stoney Jack received a thousand pounds for the hoard and
his navvies about one hundred pounds each, which sent
them off on quite a bender by all accounts.
The Cheapside Hoard pieces are not of the sort worn by
royalty and were probably the stock of a jeweller catering
to the increasingly prosperous middle-class.
During the
late Renaissance era, Cheapside was the goldsmiths’ and
jewellers’ district so this discovery makes sense but
we do
not know for certain why the jewellery was abandoned.
Quite simply it is the “greatest hoard of Elizabethan and
Jacobean jewellery in the world”. 500 individual items
from all over the world including loose gemstones,
fashionable Stuart enamelwork, a gold watch in a case set
with Columbian emeralds, cameos of a dog, the goddesses
Isis and Diana and a beautiful gold and white enamel scent
bottle set with rubies and diamonds.
The collection was split between the Museum of London
(as it became), the British Museum and the V&A but from
18 October 2013 to 27 April 2014
it will be displayed
in its entirety for the first time in over a century in an
exhibition at the
Museum of London
.
City & Village Tours is offering a choice of two tours
including this exhibition. One is a walking tour centred
on and around Cheapside and the other a coach based
tour of a broader sweep of Tudor and Stuart London with
just a few steps of walking before spending the afternoon
feasting your eyes on this extraordinary and priceless
treasure trove. Both tours will examine the mystery of the
Cheapside Hoard against the backdrop of Elizabethan and
Jacobean London as a centre of conspicuous consumption
at the crossroads of the Old and New Worlds.
Please look out for further details in future issues of
The Kettle
but if you want to reserve a date for your group
now please call us on 0845 812 5000. It is anticipated
that the tour price will be between £18.50 and £20.00.