"The Beau Street Hoard, found in Bath, Somerset, is the fifth-largest hoard ever found in Britain and the largest ever discovered in a British Roman town. It consists of an estimated 17,500 silver Roman coins dating from between 32 BC and 274 AD. The hoard was found on Beau Street about 150 metres (490 ft) from the town's Roman Baths, built when Bath was a Roman colony known as Aquae Sulis.
It was discovered in 2008 by archaeologists from Cotswold Archaeology on the site of what is to be a new pool for the Gainsborough Hotel and Thermal Spa. It is the largest hoard ever found in the UK by a professional archaeologist. The coins were found fused together into a large block. It was secreted under the floor of a Roman building near the face of a masonry wall, within a small oval pit measuring about 40 cm × 30 cm (16 in × 12 in). The find's location makes it highly unusual, as hoards more typically come from rural locations. It was thought initially that the hoard comprised up to 30,000 coins but the estimated number was subsequently reduced to around 17,400. The hoard appears to have been deposited towards the end of the 3rd century AD; coins spanning a period from 32 BC to 274 AD have been identified by British Museum conservators.
When the hoard was discovered it was believed that it had been deposited in a wooden box which had since rotted away, but X-ray analysis of the block of coins by Southampton University has found that they had been stored in a number of leather bags. Six bags were visible on the X-rays, and two more were discovered as the hoard underwent conservation. Traces of the leather are still visible, having been partially protected from decay by contact with the copper coins, which repelled the bacteria that would otherwise have destroyed it. The bags contained the following:
- One bag of denarii dating from 32 BC to the 240's AD (the oldest being a coin issued by Mark Antony that was already 300 years old at the time of its deposition), plus a handful of radiates from the 250's.
- Four bags of high-silver radiates from the 3rd century, dating up to the 260's.
- Three bags of debased (low-silver) radiates from the 3rd century, dating up to the 270's, consisting of coins which had been heavily debased (in some cases so much so that they were mostly bronze rather than silver).
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