The entire glittering Cheapside Hoard – hundreds of pieces of golden and gem-studded Tudor and Jacobean jewellery – is to go on display at the Museum of London next autumn, together with a possible murder mystery story, for the first time since a workman's pickaxe smashed through the brick floor of a London cellar more than a century ago.
The blow exposed one of the most spectacular buried treasures ever found, and the workmen evidently scrambled to grab every shining fragment, aware they had a ready market in an enigmatic figure known to them as Stoney Jack – famous among London navvies for buying their more interesting finds in pubs, cash down, no questions asked.
What they had found, in an old house being demolished on Cheapside, just a five-minute walk from the present museum at London Wall, was extraordinary. The hoard of almost 500 pieces was a 17th-century goldsmith's stock – worth a king's ransom then and priceless now. Like many remaining mysteries about the hoard, it is not known how much Stoney Jack paid, but a contemporary recorded that the workmen vanished on a drinking spree which lasted for months.
"Nothing in the world comes close," said Museum of London curator Hazel Forsyth, who has spent years studying the brooches and necklaces, rings and chains, pearls and rubies, scent bottles and fan holders, two carved gems which date back 1,300 years to Byzantium – and a watch set into a hollow carved out of one stupendous emerald which was originally the size of an apple.
The most delicate are fine chains – up to two metres long – of gold, enamel and gems, which were worn several at a time, stitched on to gowns so they hung in a stupendous display of bling from collar to waist.
"This collection has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, dismissed as jewellery for the merchant classes," Forsyth said. "But at this date the merchants were among the wealthiest people in the land; they had far more disposable wealth than the aristocracy."
In trying to find out who buried the treasure, when and why, she has solved some mysteries and may have uncovered a murder. Among the huge rubies, pearls the size of acorns, emeralds and sapphires, there were some faked stones made of quartz crystal carved and dyed to resemble precious gems. Forsyth believes these may have been the work of a jeweller called Thomas Simpson, known as a skilled but sharp operator. She also believes he may have been implicated in the murder of another jeweller, who was poisoned and thrown overboard on a voyage back from the orient, and that some of the gems the unfortunate victim was bringing back to London may have ended up in the hoard.
She has recently found some crucial dating evidence for the collection in one of the least seductive pieces, a fingernail-sized chipped red seal stone. It bears the arms of the first and only Viscount Stafford, and so the collection must have been buried later than 1640, when he acquired his title, but before the Great Fire in 1666. The fire took several days to reach Cheapside, so if the hoard owner had buried it to keep it safe, like Samuel Pepys's famous parmesan cheese, he would have had time to recover it as the flames crept closer. The fact that it was not recovered suggests the owner was already dead.
Back to 1912 and the London Museum, predecessor of the present institution, was about to open. Stoney Jack's real name was GF Lawrence, and as well as running an antiques and pawn shop in Wandsworth, he was head of acquisitions for the museum, building up the collection by haunting demolition sites, and also by selling on – at a profit – things that came into his shop. He was funded by a patron to acquire the hoard for the museum, to the chagrin of the more senior institutions – the British Museum, which was mollified by the gift of a few pieces, and the V&A which has just one chain.
Although crowds queued to see the beautiful pieces when the London Museum opened, the whole collection has never been displayed together before.
The ones that got away remain one of the taunting mysteries of the collection. Forsyth is convinced that not all the pieces came to the Wandsworth pawn shop, tied up in handkerchiefs and stuffed into pockets – and she hopes some may turn up as a result of the exhibition.
The Cheapside Hoard: London's Lost Jewels runs at the Museum of London from 11 October to 27 April