Restoration of Norfolk hall uncovers Tudor and Elizabethan finds

[FfFfFfFF 58,118]

Everyone imagines that lifting the floorboards of an old house will uncover hidden wonders but perhaps not as plentiful as a page from a 600-year-old illuminated manuscript, hundreds of high-status Elizabethan textiles, fragments of 16th-century handwritten music and an empty box of Terry’s chocolates.

The National Trust on Monday revealed remarkable details of one of the largest archaeology hauls ever found under the floors of one of its properties. The stash in the attics of Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, which dates back to 1482, has astonished the team working on the project.

“You’d expect to find things like cigarette packets and coins and scraps of newspaper but he began to discover a treasure trove of extraordinary, very early things.”

One of the star finds has been a page from a late 15th-century illuminated manuscript, still with the glimmer of gold leaf and bright blue. There are also far more mundane discoveries such as a box of Terry’s chocolates dating from the second world war. The wrappers and tissue paper remain but not the chocolates suggesting it was hastily hidden by someone with a guilty conscience.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/17/restoration-of-norfolk-hall-uncovers-tudor-and-elizabethan-finds-oxburgh-hall