I Found My Oldest Coin Digging Up A Graveyard

WOOOOAH! Don't take the title of this blog post as criminal activity! My previous job was a labourer working for 2 builders who specialised in Church restoration. A whole new drainage system had to be put in and you know what that means... Trenches... at least 3 foot deep... around the whole Church. This meant we'd be digging up history! We'd be digging through unmarked graves from hundreds of years ago. This coin didn't come from a grave though.

We were digging the trench for the pipe on the North side of the Church. Lee, my boss, was on the digger and I was with the shovel, down and dirty in the trenches making sure the trench had a nice 'fall' so the water in the pipe would actually run down it! Half way along the North side I remember Lee dropping a pile of soil from his digger onto the side and this circular piece of metal catching my eye.

I knew what it was straight away. I was worried that we'd have to 'hand it in' to a museum or something and they wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I would have! I got it into my pocket and I didn't even know what coin it was! It could have been a coin from 1500, 1300, a gold coin, or just a rotten 50 pence.

At dinner time I took it to my bag and put my phone light on it around the date. 1797! Bingo! I say bingo... It's virtually worthless. I would say it's worth face value. Yep 1 pence. It's a One Penny coin from 1797. Look at the condition! Horrendous! For any of you new policemen scouring the web for criminal activity please don't waste your time chasing me down for this old thing! To me it's part of history. It's the stories like these that make me want to collect and discover coins.

I actually did 'replace' the coin, planting my own coin built into the same church. I will do a blog post on this tomorrow! I've even got a photo of me building it in, and a photo of the note I left. Stay tuned!