Britain 17th century gold coins discovered under the kitchen floor: the couple receives 866,440 euros for them

It is the ultimate dream that a couple from the British town of Ellerby, near Hull, lived. The two bought an 18th-century house and renovated it piece by piece. When they wanted to repair the kitchen floor by removing some of the old boards, they made an unexpected discovery. One that will now undoubtedly help them finance the renovation work even more…

Because what the couple found under the floorboards was nothing more than a classic gold treasure. A large number of coins, several hundred years old. Apparently someone had hidden them here, in a clay pot, to save them for the future, and they had never had a chance to recover them themselves or tell their descendants about the hiding place. And so, the treasure remained intact in the kitchen of the old house for more than three hundred years.

The gold hoard probably dates back to 1745

In total there are 264 coins dating from 1610 to 1727. Historians have now been able to trace the history of the treasure to a wealthy merchant family in the region: the Maisters. They had amassed a small fortune through intense trade with the port cities of the Baltic Sea. The family headquarters is an impressive house in Hull which still exists today, but they also had a presence in Ellerby. A daughter of the family had married there: Sarah Maister lived there with her husband Joseph Fernley, and she continued to live there after she was widowed.

So it may have been Sarah, who died in 1745, or her husband before her, who once hid the gold treasure under the kitchen floor. In any case, it was a real blessing for the couple who finally found it: the Ellerby hoard is considered one of the largest finds of gold coins in Britain and has already been auctioned: experts estimate it at £250,000 ( about 280,000 euros). ). It was finally sold through the Spink auction house for the incredible figure of 866,440 euros.

Sources: “Yorkshire Post Office”, “NBC News”