ALL THAT GLITTERS
For almost 300 years, a Colombian emerald the size of a plum lay buried beneath the foundations of a shop in London’s Cheapside. The green jewel had been cut, polished, hollowed out and fitted with a gold clock, which was set with smaller emeralds, to turn it into an incredibly ostentatious pocket watch.
The emerald has been described by London Museum curator Hazel Forsyth as “one of the most exquisite jewels in the world”. The only thing more remarkable than the fact it had been hidden in the ground is that it was not alone. An agate cameo of Cleopatra dating back to the time before Christ; a rare sapphire pendant believed to have been worn by a Byzantine emperor; a cameo from the court of Queen Elizabeth I; and hundreds of other jewels and gemstones had all been parcelled up with the watch and lowered into the earth.
They remained there, unseen, until the Cheapside building was demolished in 1912 and a worker noticed something glittering beneath his pickaxe. Amid clods of dirt, labourers found pearls,
