When they started the renovation of the 400-year-old building, they put in the floor on the ground floor. It was made of concrete and came from a later time. By removing it, they wanted to reduce the area by 60 centimeters and thus increase the height of the lower rooms.
While digging in the kitchen, they came across a broken ceramic bowl full of gold and silver coins, which they had staff from the British Museum in London examine. They will go to auction this month and, according to The Guardian, they could fetch 35,000 pounds (more than a million CZK), which would significantly help the owners cover the costs of reconstruction.
“It’s a 400-year-old house, so there was a lot of work to do. We removed all the floors and ceilings and went back to the stone walls. In doing so, we decided to lower the ground floor to gain more ceiling height,” explained Mrs Betty, who works as a carer for the NHS.
“I was with the kids one evening and my husband was digging with a pickaxe when he called to say he had found something. He put all the coins in the bucket. If we hadn’t lowered the floor, they would still be there today. I suppose the owner intended to dig them up at some point, but never got the chance to do so,” she added.
Duke’s Auctioneers specialist Julian Smith said the estate includes a 17th-century oblong house. The current owners bought it in 2019 and later started an extensive renovation.
“They removed the floor. In some areas there were still old cobblestones under the concrete, but where the coins were found there was bare ground,” explained Smith.
An amateur treasure hunter also recently discovered a buried set of historic coins in a muddy field near the southern English village of Ansty.
A Brit won a metal detector in a raffle and then found a treasure worth hundreds of thousands
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Tags: renovating homestead couple discovered thousands gold silver coins floor kitchen
