'I was shaking when I first unearthed it': 11th-century silver coin hoard unearthed in England

Archaeologists in England have unearthed a hoard of 321 silver coins in mint condition on the construction site of a nuclear power plant. The coins were wrapped in cloth and lead, suggesting their owner may have been trying to protect them while burying them to avoid having them confiscated.

The coins — some of which are from small, rural mints, and therefore quite rare — date to between 1036 and 1044. This means they coincide with the start of the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor's reign, a turbulent period of English history during which the king exiled and confiscated the properties of several elites who had fallen out of his favor, according to a statement.

The 11th-century value of the coin hoard, amounting to 320 pence, would have been a sizable sum for most people at the time — enough to buy about 16 cows, said Alexander Bliss, a coin specialist with Oxford Cotswold Archaeology (OCA), the organization that excavated the coins.

"Perhaps the owner of the hoard was concerned about the new regime [or] political situation and wider social instability, taking steps to hide their wealth," Bliss told Live Science in an email. "There are now three hoards from this period (1042 to 1044) known across England, which strengthens the idea that the first years of Edward's reign were not calm."

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Anglo-Saxon coin hoards are relatively rare, Bliss said, and the newly discovered treasure stands out because archaeologists excavated it in its original context, with a preserved textile pouch still holding the coins. Many coin hoards lack such context, either because they have been disturbed by agricultural activity or because some metal detectorists don't immediately recognize the significance of broken casing and leave it behind.

"In this instance, preserving the pouch was very important because it forms part of the overall 'object' as one element of containment for the coins," Bliss said. "We also wanted to understand whether the lead was just a piece of sheet or had been detached from a larger object."

Archaeologists undid the pouch in a laboratory and determined that the lead wrapping was manufactured from folded sheet, suggesting that the owner of the hoard took care when burying it and used a casing he or she knew to be sturdy.

Based on the archaeological record, lead sheet was not an uncommon method of storing coins — but the choice of this relatively solid material begs the question of why the owner didn't use a pot instead, Bliss said. "Perhaps they were unable to access one which was small enough, or alternatively perhaps they wanted to try and disguise the valuable contents," he said.

The owner of the hoard was likely a person of middling status, rather than an elite or somebody of national importance. They might have had local influence and therefore feared repercussions from the regime change, prompting them to bury a saving pot following the coronation of Edward the Confessor.

Archaeologists discovered the coin hoard while excavating a site on the Suffolk coast in eastern England, where construction for a new nuclear power station called Sizewell C began in 2024.

"I was shaking when I first unearthed it," Andrew Pegg, an OCA archaeologist, said in the statement. "The information we are learning from it is stunning and I'm so proud to have added to the history of my own part of Suffolk."

It's unclear why the owner never came back for the coins, but it's possible that he or she died before managing to recover it or tell anyone about it. "They might alternatively have been prevented from recovering them due to other means, for example if they left or were exiled from the country and were unable to return," Bliss said.