If you’re a workman in early 20th-century London and have just been tasked with tearing up an old cellar floor, you expect dust, cobwebs, and maybe a few old rat skeletons. What you do not expect is to stumble on a hoard of bling that would make even the most flamboyant Tudor courtiers weak at the knees. Yet that’s exactly what happened in 1912, when labourers digging in Cheapside, in the heart of the City of London, unearthed what remains one of the most dazzling caches of antique jewelry ever found: the Cheapside Hoard.
The story starts in a long-forgotten cellar, once part of a goldsmith’s shop near St. Paul’s Cathedral. London was a bustling hub of trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, a place where ships sailed in laden with treasures from every corner of the known world. Cheapside itself was packed with jewelers and goldsmiths catering to the tastes of royals, merchants, and anyone with a purse fat enough to buy status in gemstone form. As for the hoard, all we know is that sometime around 1640 the treasure was carefully stashed away in the ground of the goldsmith’s cellars.
When it finally reemerged, the sheer scale of the find caused jaws to drop. Over 400 individual pieces were recovered: rings, necklaces, brooches, cameos, scent bottles, even a tiny gold watch shaped like a melon. The workmanship was exquisite, the designs intricate, and the gemstones came from as far afield as India, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Persia. This wasn’t a modest stash; this was the jewelry equivalent of a world tour, a glittering testimony to London’s global reach during the Age of Exploration.
Beneath this pendant's large pearl hangs a carved sapphire showing St Thomas.
This opulent gem-set bottle was used to hold perfume.
