A Foundation Stone “Hoard” het Nuwe Kerk, Cape Town 1833
Dr. Frank Mitchell (1986)
Hoards play a very important part in the elucidation of numismatic history. Whether Macedonian gold and silver buried in an earthenware jar in Pella by some wealthy merchant or the savings of a Jacobite landowner hidden in a pot as he prepared to run from Cromwell’s army, a hoard is finite. One can be sure that the pieces in that hoard were recognised as valuable by their owner at the time they were hidden: that they were probably current in the district where they were hidden, at the date of their burial.
Of course, the larger it is, and the greater the variety of coins included in it, the more important it will be, and the more definite the conclusions which can be drawn from it. No matter how small the hoard may be, however - even a single V.O.C. “1 Gulden” piece of Utrecht ploughed up in a Constantia vineyard - it may represent a vital link in the numismatic story. It follows that every coin collector who aspires to the title of “Numismatist” has a grave responsibility to posterity, the responsibility to ensure that every coin “find”, no matter how uninteresting it may at first appear, is properly recorded.
There are still many gaps in the numismatic story of South Africa. “What coins”, one is asked “have been used at the Cape since the first European settlement in 1652?” or “What coins did the Voortrekkers take with them when they set off North with their wagons in the 1830’s?” There is still no final answer to these questions, no full and final or comprehensive list of coins to be found in the market place of 17th, 18th or 19th century Cape Town, in the days when our embryo city was “The Tavern of the Seas”.
In recent years coins in significant numbers have been recovered from at least ten shipwreck sites off the Cape Coast. Some of these “wreck-hoards” have been reasonably well recorded (see Note 1), others are still being investigated. From them we have gained much valuable information, but the majority of coins found were either part of a consignment from some European merchant company - Portuguese, Dutch or English - being sent to their trading stations in the East, or they represented soldiers’ or professional persons’ savings being taken “home” from the East, to Europe. Coins recovered from wrecks on our coast do not, therefore, provide conclusive evidence that similar pieces were current ashore.
From time to time parcels of British sovereigns or silver coins of the Union of South Africa of the 1920s or 30’s have been brought in by Africans after having been retrieved from hiding places in the dung floors of their huts, but these can hardly be regarded as hoards. More interesting was the find in the late 1950's of a quantity of British silver near Lake Arthur in the Cradock district. Most were shillings, with a few half-crowns of George IV and William IV, in uncirculated though corroded state. With them were a few pieces of the last coinage of George III, which had seen some circulation. The latest pieces were shillings of William IV dated 1836. It was assumed when the hoard was found that these coins represented soldiers’ pay which had been hidden in time of crisis by some military paymaster during one of the many Frontier Wars. Unfortunately no detailed record of this hoard was ever made.
I recently had the opportunity to re-examine the contents of a “hoard” of a different kind — a collection of coins which had lain hidden under a foundation stone in Cape Town for a hundred and thirty years. In 1967, Die Nuwe Kerk, a church building of the Dutch Reformed Church (Die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk in Suid-Afrika), situated in Nuwe Kerk Street, Cape Town, was demolished — having become too small for its expanding congregation. An engraved silver plaque on the foundation stone proclaimed in Latin that it had been laid by the British Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole, C.B., on the 20th April, 1833, in the fourth year of the reign of King William IV, and in the presence of the Chief Justice, the Secretary of the Colony and Church dignitaries.
When the foundation stone was raised during the demolition, a collection of 20 coins was found, together with certain other contemporary articles such as a newspaper. At the time, I had the opportunity of only a brief look at this interesting little “hoard”, and could do no more than make a preliminary list. Recently I was delighted to find that my advice had been followed, that the collection had been kept together and was being preserved. More important, I have now had the opportunity to examine the collection closely, and therefore to put the find on permanent record.
This was the collection as found: (illustrations are of similar pieces which I have since acquired)
BRITISH COINS
1. Sovereign: George IV: Laureate head: (5.3800) 1824
2. Half-sovereign: George IV: Bare head: (S.3804) 1826
3. Half-crown: George IV: Bare head: (S.3809) 1826
4. Shilling: George IV: Laureate head (second reverse S.3811) 1824
5. Sixpence: George IV: Laureate head (second reverse S.3184) 1824
6. Sixpence: William IV: (5.3836) 1831
7. Penny: George III: Cartwheel: (S.3777) 1797
8. Half-penny: George IV (5.3824) 1826
9. Farthing: George IV: Laureate bust, draped (S.3822) 1826
COINS OF THE NETHERLANDS
10. Skilling or 6-stuiwer: (Scheepjesschelling) Zeeland: (V.93,4) 1791
11. Skilling or 6-stuiver (Rijderschelling): Nijmegen: (V.23.3) 1791
12. Vs Dukaat or Pietje: Zeeland (V.87.4) 1781? (date defaced)
13. 2-stuiver: (Dubbeltje): West Friesland: (V75,4) 1787
14. 2-stuiver (Dubbeltje): Holland: (V.56.4) 1791
15. 1-stuiver (Bezemstuiver): Zeeland: (V.94,8) 1789
16. /4 Gulden: (Kwart scheepjesgulden); (Batavia) (V.202.3) 1802
17. 50-stuiver: Louis Napoleon, Kingdom of Holland (V.192.5) 1808
OTHER COUNTRIES
18. 1-Riksdaler: Sweden: Gustav Adolph IV: (C.89) 1797
19. Half-Pagoda: Silver: English East India Co.: “Temple Type” 1807-1812 over-struck on cutdown Spanish American 8-Real (C. 126)
20. 2-Reals: Guatemala: Charles IV of Spain: (C.45) 1795 (The coin illustrated is of a similar piece of Lima of 1792.)
Right hand column top to bottom:
(17) 50-stuiver: Louis Napoleon, Kingdom of Holland (V.192.5) 1808 (obverse)
(18) I-Riksdaler: Sweden: Gustuv Adolph IV: (C.89) 1797 reverse
(19) Half-Pagoda: Silver: English East India Co.: "Temple Type" 1807-1812 reverse - overstruck on cutdown Spanish American 9-Real (C.126)
(20) 2-Reals: Guatemala: Charles IV of Spain: (C.45) (The coin illustrated is of a similar piece of Lima of 1792.)
CONCLUSIONS
Since seeing this interesting small collection, I have been stimulated to acquire a similar set. It has not been easy, and has taken time — but it has certainly been fun. I cannot claim that every coin here illustrated bears the same date as the similar piece in the Nuwe Kerk collection, but they are all otherwise identical. They have certainly provided a new impetus to my interest in the coins of the Early Cape. I wonder if Piet Retief and his friends had similar pieces in their pockets when they took off on their Great Trek in 1837?
REFERENCES:
Note 1
1. F K MITCHELL, “The Coins from the Wreck of the “Fame” ” South African Numismatic Journal, No. 4, 1967
2. F K MITCHELL, “Sea Treasure from the Wreck of the “Meeresteijn” Ibid., No.7, 1972
3. LALOU MELTZER, “The Treasure from the Shipwreck ‘Reigersdal’” Bulletin of the South African Cultural History Museum, No. 5 of 1984
C = WILLIAM D. CRAIG “Coins of the World 1750-1850 Whitman Publishing Co., Wisconsin 1966.
S = ED. PETER SEABY & FRANK PURVEY. Standard Catalogue of British Coins — Coins of England and the United Kingdom (Volume I 20 Edition), London 1984.
V = PIETER VERKADE, “Muntboek bevattende de namen en afbeeldingen van munten, geslagenin de zeven voormalig vereenigde Nederlandsche Provincien. sert den Viede van Gent tot oponzen tijd. — Schiedam 1844.
This essay was published in Numismatic Essays by Members of the South African Numismatic Society - 1986