1868 Hoard Albert Dock

Michael Farron was amongst some 600 Navvies working on excavating the basin and lock pit opening for the new Albert Dock in Hull 1868. 

The men and boys of the workforce were some 21 feet below what would become the level of the quayside. In his own words Farron described that as his spade struck a large stone it suddenly burst open and hundreds of coins cascaded out into the mud. 

There was an understandable scramble to retrieve and claim some of this hoard of coins evidently concealed in the hollowed out innards of the stone. This action was to be expected as a welcome windfall for the Navvies whose daily rate was at or below subsistence level. 

There was a general wider distribution of the coins amongst those present and a few were sold on for trifling sums. The coins were described as being in good condition and with their markings clearly discernible. Farron himself took a few of them thinking that they were of no value. 

The news of the hoard soon came to the attention of Treasury Officials in London and a raid was made to recover the items. 

Out of the alleged hundreds of pieces only a very small proportion were recovered in the initial operation and these were already spread over a wide area. There was a slow drip feed of coins over the ensuing decades from donations from local holders, private collectors or through auction sales. 

The Hull Museum on Albion Street catalogued 19 pieces in 1927 thought to have come from the hoard although in the devastating world war two bombing of that very grand porticoed building most of the collection was strewn about in the rubble and damaged or lost. 

It was well into the twentieth century that resources were dedicated to studying the hoard. 

The location of the find had at one time been one of the openings of the delta of the River Hull. It had been sealed off in the reign of Edward the First in the fourteenth century so that a single deeper water and navigable river channel could be formed to promote Kingston Upon Hull as a Port and a fortified base for naval vessels on what was a front line with Europe. 

Specialists called to investigate the hoard included historians, numismatists, metallurgists and laboratory based scientists. Understandably there was a wide range of opinions. 

An initial analysis was that the coins were Demi-Sterlings from John the Blind (1309-1347) who had fought and died at the Battle of Crecy and prior to that had been a Count of Luxembourg and Titular King of Poland. The Luxembourg State Museum were consulted. This line of enquiry was inconclusive as the coins could not be matched up to any of that era that had otherwise been in common circulation on the continent. 

Other scrutiny of the markings on some of the coins revealed lettering of "Edwardensisrex" , a London reference and clear depiction of a head and 3 painted crowns although there was an inconsistency in the lettering including a Lombardic "n". 

This led to speculation that the coins were Ha'penny issue from the reign of Edward the First which tied in with the location factor. However there was a further hypothesis that the hoard was possibly from the reign of Edward the Third who had issued Kingston Upon Hull with a Regal Issue of coinage in the 1300's. 

A series of Laboratory based tests on weight and metal content showed a poorly quality of materials and in the method of their striking. Coins of the 1300's were of a hammered type. Most revealing was the combination of a very low silver content ,traces of a silver wash onto an inferior and debased copper metal and a higher proportion of lead. This latter observation of lead was not unusual as it was a constituent in the refining of silver but not at such an elevated level. 

Gradually the consensus amongst those investigating the hoard was that it was in fact the output of a local forger. 

Farran and his contemporaries had, back in 1868, doubted that the coins has been freshly planted as a hoax given the circumstances and lack of opportunity for a perpetrator to access the building site of the Albert Dock and conceal the hollowed out stone and its stash. 

The scientific analysis was consistent with the Medieval period and so the forger, whether intentionally hiding his work or having disposed of them into the river in a panic had been from the 1300's. 

The latter explanation is more plausible as the coins because of their poor quality would have to be mixed in with legal coinage and circulated in an area of larger population than the still rather parochial Kingston Upon Hull of that era. This would have meant the coins reaching London or sent to the Continent where political, social and commercial upheaval would present a greater opportunity for subtle distribution for illicit profit into the economy. 

Continental coins of that period did have a lower silver content than English coins and so the baser material might be more readily accepted without question. 

The idea of a Hull based forger of the Medieval period is quite intriguing and particularly the chain of events that led to their eventual discovery during construction of the Albert Dock in 1868. 

I just hope that the individual was not attached to the stone either by accident or as an early example of local gang warfare over the lucrative crime of coin forging.