When Robert and Betty Fooks bought South Poorton Farm in West Dorset in 2019, they knew the 17th-century long house would need extensive work before it felt like home. What they did not expect was to find a piece of English history buried directly beneath their kitchen floor. While digging down nearly two feet one October evening to raise the ceiling height, Robert's pickaxe struck a glazed pottery bowl hidden in the bare earth. Inside were more than 1,000 gold and silver coins, some dating back to the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, others minted during the turbulent years of the First English Civil War. The discovery, later known as the Poorton Coin Hoard, would go on to sell at auction for tens of thousands of dollars, but its real value lay in the story it told about who buried it, and why, centuries before it was ever found again.
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