Fishpool Hoard

A buried treasure of medieval gold coins, rings, and jewellery hidden in Nottinghamshire woodland around 1464 — probably by a Lancastrian fleeing the Wars of the Roses.

History & Significance

During building work near Fishpool, in the Nottinghamshire village of Ravenshead, in 1966, workmen discovered a substantial hoard of medieval gold buried in the forest soil. The Fishpool Hoard, as it became known, contained 1,237 gold coins, four gold rings, two gold brooches, a length of gold chain, and several other gold items. It was the largest medieval gold coin hoard ever found in Britain.

The coins provide a precise date range for burial. The most recent issues present — gold nobles and half-nobles of Edward IV — were struck after his accession in 1461, placing the burial no earlier than 1461 and probably around 1464. This date aligns with one of the most violent and uncertain passages of the Wars of the Roses: the period following the Yorkist victory at Towton (1461), when Lancastrian resistance continued in the north of England and Lancastrian exiles fled with whatever wealth they could carry.

The hoard almost certainly belonged to a wealthy Lancastrian supporter — a noble, a royal official, or a merchant closely associated with the Lancastrian cause — who fled south through Nottinghamshire with their portable wealth and buried it for safekeeping in the forest of Sherwood. They never returned. The hoard passed into the care of the British Museum, where it remains as one of the principal numismatic monuments to the political catastrophe of the mid-fifteenth century.

The 1,237 gold coins in the Fishpool Hoard span several decades of English coinage. The majority are gold nobles and half-nobles — the standard high-denomination coins of late medieval England, featuring an image of the king standing in a ship on the obverse and an ornate cross design on the reverse. The noble had been the principal gold coin of England since Edward III introduced it in 1344, and it remained in use through the fifteenth century alongside the ryal (rose-noble) introduced by Edward IV.

The coin series represented in the hoard runs from the reign of Henry V (1413–22) through to Edward IV (from 1461). The latest coins — issues of Edward IV's early reign — establish the terminus post quem of around 1461–64. The Lancastrian issues of Henry VI (1422–61) form the largest component of the hoard, reflecting its likely origin in Lancastrian hands.

The numismatic composition of the hoard is consistent with the wealth of a senior household or administrative official. The coins had been accumulated over decades — some were already old when buried — and the range of denominations suggests careful financial management rather than a single windfall. The four gold rings and two brooches may have been personal jewellery converted to bullion in an emergency, or they may have been family heirlooms carried as portable wealth alongside the coin.

The Wars of the Roses — the dynastic conflict between the Lancastrian House of Lancaster (the red rose) and the Yorkist House of York (the white rose) that ran intermittently from 1455 to 1487 — created exactly the conditions under which wealthy individuals buried their portable assets. Estates were confiscated, families attainted, and former royal servants suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of a new regime. The pressure to conceal and secure wealth during periods of military advance or political reversal was intense.

Nottinghamshire was on a main road north from London and the midland towns: the Great North Road passed through Newark and Nottingham. Anyone fleeing north from the Lancastrian power base in the south midlands or Lincolnshire, heading for the Lancastrian strongholds in Yorkshire and ultimately Scotland, would have passed through this landscape. Sherwood Forest — still extensive in the fifteenth century — offered concealment.

The Battle of Hexham in May 1464 was one of the final defeats of Lancastrian resistance in northern England. Following the battle, Lancastrian leaders scattered, some escaping to Scotland, others captured and executed. If the Fishpool Hoard was buried around this time — as the coin evidence suggests — it may represent a direct response to that defeat: a Lancastrian supporter moving south or west, pausing in the Nottinghamshire forest to bury what they could not carry.

Fishpool lies within the historical extent of Sherwood Forest, the great royal hunting forest that covered much of north-western Nottinghamshire in the medieval period. Sherwood was a managed landscape — regulated by forest law, with defined areas of woodland, heath, and agricultural assart — but it remained substantially wooded into the early modern period. The village of Ravenshead takes its name from a feature within the forest and sits within the area that was forest land in the fifteenth century.

The soils of the Sherwood area are sandstone-based — free-draining, light, and relatively easy to dig. Gold survives well in this soil type and the absence of the kind of waterlogging that can damage iron or leather means the hoard's metalwork survived in good condition. The forest setting also explains why the hoard was not recovered by its depositor: in an emergency burial in unfamiliar woodland, re-locating the spot might have been genuinely difficult, even if the depositor survived to attempt retrieval.

The landscape around Ravenshead today is a mixture of residential development, golf courses, and remnant Sherwood forest. The Sherwood Forest Country Park, centred on the Major Oak, is a few miles to the north. The find site of the hoard is on private land and not publicly accessible, but the broader Sherwood landscape — so important to the hoard's story — is extensively accessible via country park footpaths.

The Fishpool Hoard was acquired by the British Museum following its 1966 discovery. The British Museum's numismatic department studied the hoard's coin sequence in detail, establishing both the date range and the likely national and regional origin of the issues. The hoard's composition has been cited in numismatic studies of medieval English gold coinage as evidence of how gold coins circulated in the mid-fifteenth century — which denominations were preferred, which issues were retained or withdrawn, and how private hoards differed from official mint outputs.

The four rings and two brooches have been studied by the museum's medieval collections department. The rings are of a type common in the fifteenth century: plain gold bands, or bands set with gemstones in box settings. The brooches are of the annular type — circular frames, some with decorative inscriptions or motifs. Their presence alongside the coins suggests that the hoard's owner had access to personal jewellery as well as liquid capital, consistent with a household of noble or gentry status.

The Fishpool Hoard is not currently on permanent display at the British Museum but is available for study by appointment through the Department of Coins and Medals. Its significance — as the largest medieval gold coin hoard in Britain, and as a direct physical relic of the Wars of the Roses — makes it one of the museum's more notable medieval numismatic holdings.

See the full research report for Fishpool Hoard

Scheduled monuments, PAS archaeological finds, Domesday records, geology, Roman roads, historical literature — the same report Aubrey generates for paying customers, free to read.