HOARD

De Jersey (2015) writes:

""My Lord Pembroke often told me he had hatfulls of them frequently brought to him, found in the very quarrys of Portland. After he had selected what he thought proper he melted down the rest being chiefly silver. Their being found in the Portland Quarry shews their extreme antiquity, and may well be reckon'd as high as Abraham's time, that earth into which they fell being since turned into stone."
MS of Stukeley's Britannia Metallica, c.1720, quoted by Allen 1968a, 11477
An intriguing early find which was brought to modern numismatic attention by Derek Allen (1968a). The notebook quoted above, which Stukeley appears to have begun in 1720, does not include any illustrations of the coins to which he refers - probably Danubian tetradrachms - but it does include (p. 13) a drawing of a Gallo-Belgic stater also said to have come from Portland. This distinctive coin is now in the British Museum (no. 6 in the list below).
Further evidence to link the Danubian coins with the Portland quarries is provided by another Stukeley manuscript, Contents of the Medallic History of the First Brittish Kings, dating from 1762. Referring to Stukeley's Twenty-three plates (published posthumously by his son-in-law, Richard Fleming, c.1770), it records at p. 25 that
I. 3. 4. 5. 6. 10. & "many more of Mr White's collection, here ingrav'd, belong'd to my great frd. the late learned Heneage lord Winchelsea's most noble cabinet. they were found in digging the Portland quarrys absolutely incrusted in the stone. this was the case likewise of Lord Pembrokes Brittish coins, as he has often mentioned to me."
A third manuscript, also in the Bodleian, complicates the picture somewhat. It confirms that coins nos 3, 5, 6 and 10 on plate I came from Portland, and once belonged to Mr White, but although coin no. 4 is also said to have belonged to White, there is no mention of a Portland provenance. However, plate II.1, another coin in White's collection, is provenanced to Portland in this manuscript.
Four of these coins - nos 3, 5, 6 and 10 - are Danubian tetradrachms, and it is not unreasonable to assume that these were part of the hoard or hoards which were brought to Lord Pembroke. The relationship of these coins to the gold supposedly from Portland is less certain. It seems very unlikely that they would have been deposited with Stukeley's coin no. 4, which is a British Qa stater (ABC 485). The coin on Stukeley's plate II.1 is an Eastern Gaulish type, LT XXXVI 8932, traditionally attributed to the Sequani, which along with the Gallo-Belgic large flan stater drawn in the notebook of 1720 might be better candidates for an association with the Danubian silver, at least in terms of their broad chronology. But such an association seems intrinsically unlikely. There is at least one more gold coin from Portland - a Gallo-Belgic F stater (ABC 22) in Dorset County Museum (CCI 69.0498, SCBI 24, no. 6) - but again no particular reason to link it with the Danubian silver. At a distance of almost three centuries it seems very unlikely that we will obtain any definitive information on these "hatfulls" of coins, but it seems certain that at least one hoard of Danubian tetradrachms was discovered on Portland Bill."

Archaeological context

No archaeological context available.