Silver girdle with medallions. France, probably Paris, about 1520-1620.

Silver girdle with medallions showing the Sacred Monogram (IHS) and in Lombardic lettering 'MARIA'.

Said to have been excavated at St Albans, Hertfordshire. The girdle was bought for £5 from George Fabian Lawrence (1862-1939), known to workers on London's building sites as 'Stony Jack'. His life is outlined by Hazel Forsyth in The Cheapside Hoard, London's Lost Jewels (Museum of London, 2013, pp. 7-9). It was to Lawrence that the workers went when the Cheapside Hoard was discovered in 1912. In 1937 he said that the worked proved 'apt pupils, and hardly a Saturday passed without someone bringing me something. I got 15,000 objects out of the soil of London in 15 years for the London Museum alone'.

The girdle was described when accessioned in 1899 as bearing the Paris date letter for 1524-5 (?). It appears to bear a goldsmith's mark of characteristic Paris form with crown, fleur-de-lys, and two grains, above a symbol. There is also what appears to be crowned mark with a letter, but there is uncertainty over this letter.

13-1899