Lunchtime Lectures: The Cheapside Hoard

This is the story of the most important Treasure Trove of Tudor and Stuart gems and jewels ever discovered, and what happened to it after it was dug out of a cellar in the City of London just before the First World War. Alongside Sutton Hoo and the tomb of Tutankhamun, the Cheapside Hoard takes its place as an icon of twentieth century archaeology. 

June 1912. A pair of workmen deposit a heavy ball of clay in the antiques shop of George Fabian Lawrence, or ‘Stony Jack’ as he's better known. As Lawrence picks through the mud, a speck of gold catches his eye. A pearl earring tumbles into his hand, and an amethyst pendant shaped like a bunch of grapes. A Burmese ruby follows, then Colombian emeralds, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and turquoise from Iran, a single emerald cut into a watch case, a salamander set with emeralds and diamonds tankards, a gem-encrusted pomander, and handfuls of finger rings featuring ancient cameos and intaglios engraved with classical scenes and put into Tudor settings. This is a jeweller’s stock-in-trade, whispering new things about the tastes of the merchant classes of the day. A Tudor (or perhaps Stuart) mystery immediately presents itself to the captivated Edwardians: who buried the treasures and why did they not come back for them? Rich and poor alike, fall under the spell of the Hoard and Queen Mary of Teck herself soon has her hand in the treasure chest. 

Diving into London’s bustling, sometimes lawless, antiques trade just before the First World War, we’ll return to time when archaeological digs were a ‘wild west’ and no one was too concerned about ‘provenance’ and learn about the dramatic fight that broke out over who owned the charismatic jewels.

We’ll pay special attention to the pieces from the Hoard that came to the V&A and discover how the treasures ended up here.

Victoria Shepherd is a historian and author of Stony Jack and the Lost Jewels of Cheapside: Treasure and Ghosts in the London Clay (Oneworld, paperback April 2026). Her first book was A History of Delusions: The Glass King, A Substitute Husband and a Walking Corpse (Oneworld, June 2023). Victoria is also a producer of history documentaries for BBC Radio 4. She is a born and bred south Londoner and loves nothing more than wandering through the city, chasing hints of its past.