A privately assembled collection of pierced historic coins, many linked to London’s long history of excavation and trade, has drawn renewed attention to the role of chance discoveries in understanding the city’s past. The group of coins, acquired over roughly two decades and now worn daily on a string, spans from the Roman era to the late nineteenth century and illustrates how minor artefacts can illuminate broader patterns of urban life, minting, and personal belief.

Centred on a coin originally purchased from a street trader around the time of a major Roman cemetery excavation in Spitalfields, the collection underscores the enduring presence of Roman and later material beneath the modern East End. The coins’ physical condition, including deliberate piercings carried out in past centuries, points to their second lives as jewellery and amulets rather than simple currency.

Roman-Era Coin as Anchor of the Collection

The collection began with a Roman coin bought approximately twenty years ago during the excavation of a Roman cemetery in the Spitalfields area of London’s East End. The coin was later identified as having been minted in London, providing direct evidence of local Roman-era minting activity tied to the site’s archaeological significance.

The coin bears a pierced hole, with the modification confirmed as dating from the Roman period, when coins were commonly adapted and worn as amulets. Its continued use today as a pendant links a modern London resident to an unnamed wearer from antiquity, illustrating how small portable objects can carry meaning across centuries.

The Roman piece is associated with the Emperor Arcadius, and its reverse features the figure of Minerva, reinforcing its origin within the late Roman imperial period. Its survival and discovery in Spitalfields align with long-standing reports of Roman coins being dug up in that district over several centuries.

Growth of a Collection of Pierced Coins

What began as a single Roman artefact has grown into a wider collection as additional pierced coins were acquired from dealers who tend to discount such pieces. The market’s lower valuation of pierced examples, compared with intact numismatic specimens, has enabled the creation of a group of historically significant but commercially modest objects.

Each coin in the collection shows evidence of having been worn or adapted by previous owners, indicating prior sentimental, religious, or practical uses. The collection’s curator has taken on the role of present-day wearer, effectively becoming the latest custodian in a chain of ownership stretching back hundreds of years.

The entire assemblage is carried on a single string, worn around the neck in everyday life. This approach keeps coins from multiple eras together as a continuous sequence, rather than separated in cabinets or cases, and highlights their role as lived objects rather than purely display items.

Incident Reveals Emotional and Historical Value

The significance of the collection became fully apparent during an incident on Princelet Street in the East End, when the string holding the coins broke on a dark, rainy night. The coins fell into the street gutter, prompting an urgent effort to recover each piece from the wet pavement.

That event underscored both the fragility of carrying such objects in daily life and their accumulated importance over time. The scramble to retrieve them highlighted how a set of relatively small and inexpensive artefacts can acquire substantial personal and historical weight once assembled and worn.

Following the incident, the collection continued to be maintained and worn, indicating an ongoing commitment to preserving and carrying these artefacts rather than storing them out of sight. The coins remain in regular use as physical links to earlier centuries of London history.

Timeline from Tudor Minting to Victorian Circulation

Beyond the Roman coin, the collection includes examples from several key periods of English and British monetary history. A silver sixpence minted in 1569 at the Tower of London represents the Tudor era and features the head of a ruling monarch alongside a Tudor rose motif.

Another silver sixpence, minted at the Tower of London in 1602, continues the early modern sequence and again bears the reigning monarch’s head, showing continuity in both minting location and iconography across the turn of the seventeenth century. These coins reflect the central role of the Tower as a minting site and the prominence of ruler portraits in asserting authority on circulating money.

A silver sixpence dated 1676, featuring the head of Charles II, marks the Restoration period. It extends the chronological coverage of the collection into the later seventeenth century, documenting shifts in portrait style and inscription while maintaining the tradition of silver small-denomination coinage.

Eighteenth-Century Small Change and Everyday Use

From the eighteenth century, the collection includes a farthing dated 1749 alongside a silver sixpence of 1758. Both carry the head of George II, indicating their issue during the same reign yet representing different denominations and likely different patterns of everyday use.

Farthings functioned as very small change, often used in minor purchases, while sixpences had higher purchasing power and may have been saved, gifted, or adapted for personal display. Their presence together in the same collection highlights the full spectrum of coinage from low to modest value and illustrates how pieces from different economic niches can be preserved side by side once they leave circulation.

The survival of these coins in pierced form suggests that their utility extended beyond everyday transactions, with individuals choosing to keep them as keepsakes, tokens, or decorative items. Their later acquisition by a modern collector continues that trajectory of re-use.

Nineteenth-Century Coins and Changing Urban Context

The collection continues into the nineteenth century with coins bearing the head of Queen Victoria, including a half farthing dated 1844. This very low-denomination piece points to the fine gradations of value used in the mid-nineteenth-century economy, particularly relevant in dense urban centres such as London.

Another key item is a silver sixpence dated 1896, issued toward the end of the nineteenth century. By bridging the early and late Victorian periods through small-denomination coinage, the collection illustrates evolving design conventions as well as long-term continuity in the types of coins used in everyday trade and savings.

The inclusion of these Victorian coins, alongside far earlier Roman and Tudor-era pieces, visually compresses over a millennium of London’s economic and social history into a single wearable chain. It provides a tangible timeline of changing rulers, mint marks, and monetary systems, all connected to the same geographic area.

Public Engagement and Personal Memories

The visibility of the collection and the narrative attached to it have prompted responses from members of the public who have shared their own experiences with historic coins. Some recount finding Roman coins during childhood construction or utility works and later having them identified by local museums, reinforcing the idea that archaeological discovery in London often occurs in everyday settings.

These personal accounts also describe how early encounters with ancient coins can spark lifelong interest in looking carefully at the ground and at disturbed soil, in the hope of encountering further traces of the past. Even when later searches yield no finds, the memory of touching a coin last held by a person from antiquity remains powerful.

Other responses connect specific coin dates, such as 1896, to family histories and birth years in London districts. This demonstrates how standard mint dates stamped on small pieces of metal can intersect with private genealogies and local social history, lending added resonance to otherwise ordinary objects.

Role of Informal Discoveries in Urban History

The collection’s origin in a casual purchase from a street trader near an excavation highlights the way coins and other small finds can move into informal markets once they leave controlled archaeological contexts. While some artefacts enter institutional collections, others quickly circulate through private hands, street stalls, and personal jewellery.

Such informal routes can complicate formal documentation of find spots and stratigraphy, but they also ensure that a wide range of people encounter and preserve historic objects. The repeated re-use of coins as pendants or amulets extends their life span beyond their function as state-issued currency.

The Spitalfields area, with its history of Roman burial grounds and subsequent development, remains a focal point for such discoveries. Disturbances to the ground through construction, infrastructure works, or cemetery excavations continue to bring older material to the surface, where it may be recovered by workers, residents, or passers-by.

Continuing Care and Future Preservation of the Coins

The current custodian of the collection continues to wear the coins on a string as part of daily life in London, maintaining the tradition of using them as personal objects rather than static display pieces. Ongoing care involves ensuring the physical security of the coins after the Princelet Street incident, including attention to the strength of the cord and the integrity of each pierced hole.

Future preservation options for such a collection could range from continued personal use to eventual transfer to a more formal setting, but no change has been announced. For now, the coins remain in active circulation in a non-monetary sense, carried through the modern city while bearing visible traces of its past.