Robert Fooks swung a pickaxe into his kitchen floor to steal a few more inches of ceiling height. Instead, he cracked open a glazed pottery bowl that had been sitting in the earth beneath his 400-year-old Dorset cottage since the English Civil War. Inside sat roughly 1,000 gold and silver coins, untouched since someone buried them in the mid-1640s.
The story surfaced after the coins sold at auction in 2024. The hoard lay hidden beneath the kitchen floor at South Poorton Farm until Robert and Betty Fooks decided to lower the ground level during a renovation. “One evening, I was with the children and my husband was digging with a pickaxe when he called to say they’ve found something,” Betty Fooks told The Guardian. “He put all the coins in a bucket.”
The couple bought the property in 2019 and launched a full-scale renovation. Stripping the kitchen back to its stone walls, they dug down nearly two feet. Under a layer of old flagstones and bare earth, Robert’s pickaxe hit the bowl. Betty Fooks put it plainly: “If we hadn’t lowered the floor, they would still be hidden there. I presume the person intended to retrieve them but never got the chance.”
A Fortune in Gold and Silver, Minted for Kings and Queens
The Poorton Coin Hoard includes gold and silver currency from the reigns of five monarchs, stretching from Edward VI through Charles I. The coins range from worn sixpences to a gold unite valued at 20 shillings. Gold coins bear the faces of James I and Charles I. Silver half crowns, shillings, and sixpences carry the marks of Elizabeth I and Philip and Mary.
The couple reported the find to a local finds liaison officer, who sent the coins to the British Museum for cleaning and identification. Museum staff determined the coins were deposited once, between 1642 and 1644, based on the mint dates stamped into the metal. That two-year window lands directly inside the first English Civil War.
Julian Smith, a specialist at Duke’s Auctioneers, described the dig site. “The modern concrete floor was removed and the floor dug down by nearly 2ft to provide greater height to the downstairs of the property,” he said. “In some areas there were old flagstones under the concrete but the area the coins were found was bare earth.”
War at the Doorstep, Treasure Under the Floorboards
During the English Civil War, burying coins was not caution. It was survival. Soldiers from both sides entered homes, demanding food and seizing anything valuable. Dorset sat directly in the path of troop movements throughout the conflict.
Waseem Ahmed, a doctoral student of history at University College London, explained the risk to Live Science. “If you were a royalist or suspected royalist, you could have your estates sequestrated by the Parliamentary side and vice versa.” Property seizure was a tool of war, and ordinary families paid the price.
In Lyme Regis, a Parliamentarian garrison survived an eight-week siege in 1644, resupplied by smugglers who slipped through naval blockades with food and gunpowder. Wealthy families like the Sydenhams and the Strangways switched allegiances as power shifted.
In smaller settlements like Poorton, villagers could do little but hide what they could and hope no soldiers arrived. The pottery bowl shattered by Robert Fooks was one of those hiding places, sealed and never retrieved.
From a Shattered Bowl to a $75,900 Auction Result
The British Museum returned the cleaned and catalogued coins to the Fooks family. On April 23, 2024, Duke’s Auctioneers sold the collection. Bidding reached roughly £60,740, or about $75,900, more than double the original estimate of £35,000. A single gold Charles I coin fetched £5,000. Full auction results are available through Duke’s Auctioneers.
The coins had waited nearly 400 years beneath that kitchen floor. Betty Fooks returned to the one fact that still stands out: the person who buried the hoard never came back for it. The war ended with the execution of Charles I in 1649 and an 11-year republic. Many who hid their savings did not survive to dig them up again.
The Poorton Coin Hoard now sits in the documented history of a country split by civil war. Its value lies in the metal, but also in the silence it fills between a burial in the 1640s and a pickaxe strike in 2019.
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