Jon Dougherty has made an exciting discovery on his plot (plot 22) – an ancient coin buried in the soil of one of his raised beds.
It is not a Roman coin, because it has a milled edge, produced by modern minting methods, whereas the Roman (and medieval) method of minting was to hammer a die into a metal disk. So the edge of a Roman coin is not ‘machined’ like this one.
Could the coin be identified more precisely? It is very worn and a coin specialist in Corbridge made nothing of it. But – you will be pleased to hear – bright oblique lighting and an excellent Lumix digital camera have (I think) cracked its mystery. Below is the digital image of the obverse (the head side):
You can see there appears just above the profile bust on the coin the Roman numeral ‘III’, which must be the number for George III. Indeed, just to the left of the number you can (if you really look) see the letters ‘US’ which would be the end of George’s name in Latin – ‘GEORGIUS’. You can even see a ‘D’ to the right of the number which would bave been the beginning of ‘DEI GRATIA REX’- king by the grace of God. The fact that the profile bust is right-facing confirms this as a George III coin, as does the laurel wreath.
Below is an example from 1799 in much better condition so that you can compare the features on it with our coin:
The reverse (tail side) of our coin is equally revealing.
The oblique light has allowed the digital camera to see the left-facing Britannia, with the ‘T’ of ‘Britannia’ still visible top left, and the stem of the trident she is holding bottom right. Here is the reverse of the 1799 George III coin for you to compare:
Jon’s discovery is exciting – and moving. George III died in 1820; our allotments were first gardened in the 1840s. Was this an old coin, carefully saved from their youth, and lost – no doubt to their dismay – by one of the gardeners who were on our site before us, nearly 200 years ago.
Jon has very generously presented the coin to the Association. What other antiquities can we find to connect us with those who came before us?
