ID
731
Permalink
Hoard name
WALBROOK
Data type
Hoard?
Date of discovery (from)
1 Jan 1955
(to)
31 Dec 1955
Total number of coins
0
Summary
During the builders' excavation for Bucklersbury House, Walbrook, in the City of London, carried out in 1955, an immense clearance was made to a great depth in the natural soils underlying the man-made levels of London. Before this took place, scientific excavation in a limited area by Professor W.F. Grimes, on behalf of the Roman and Mediaeval London Excavation Council, had attracted a great deal of attention to the site, both from archaeologists and from the general public. His most spectacular discovery was the Temple of Mithras, which lay on the eastern edge of the site, adjoining the modern street of Walbrook. Almost of equal interest, however, to the student of Roman London, was his location of the Roman stream-bed of the Walbrook, which flowed in a southerly direction immediately to the west of the Temple of Mithras, about 30 yds. west of the street of Walbrook. The stream was subject to silting and its bed steadily rose, forming a thick deposit of black mud, which had an extraordinarily preservative effect on objects of metal which had been dropped in it from the banks. Iron was completely unrusted, while copper and bronze remained shining and bright.
"
Then came a list of AR, AE coins found in the bed of the Walbrook.
"It will be observed that apart from half a dozen coins of widely different dates before the Roman conquest of Britain, and three - also of scattered dates - after AD 160, there is a remarkably continuous series from the middle of the first century to the middle of the second. In fact, on the evidence of the composition of the whole group – treating for the moment the accumulated losses of many people as if they were the savings of a single individual in a hoard – one would say without hesitation that its formation began in the middle of the first century, with the incorporation of some earlier material, and continued at a fairly regular rate, which temporarily increased in the reign of Vespasian and declined in the second quarter of the second century, coming to an abrupt end not very long after the middle of the century. After this date the additions were very few and widely spaced in time.
