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Hollis Croft, Sheffield – the Cock Public House and the Mystery of a Medieval Coin


BenBeau

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This news item from Wessex Archeology  https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/news/hollis-croft-sheffield-cock-public-house-and-mystery-medieval-coin  makes for interesting reading. 

On 20 April 2017, an Edward I long cross silver penny was found during the excavation of the former site of the Cock, a 19th-century public house, just off Hollis Croft, Sheffield. The penny is remarkable, not just with regards to its age and relative scarcity but also to the context in which it was found.

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Couldn't it just be a coin that was found somewhere and it was kept by the finder and during it's travels was lost again either in or under the Cock.

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The author finishes the item with this comment:

"It remains unlikely that the coin’s context will be further illuminated by the planned excavation. The coin could have been dropped by an absent mind in the medieval period, churned up by ploughing, finding its way into material which was reused when the pub was erected. However, firmer conclusions remain out of reach. Although the coin confirms to a degree that the site was being used in some form during the medieval period, the nature of this link is unknown and any more definitive historiography would be speculation."  Oisin Mercer Archaeological Technician
 
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To my mind, it’s no more remarkable than unearthing a Roman coin in the middle of a farmers field? It’s a nice find, but i would imagine all but impossible to draw any historical parallels of why it was there in the first place?

Hollis Croft (previously Hollis Chardy Street on the 1736 Sheffield map) was possibly close enough to Sheffield to have been inhabited when Sheffield was being established, as far back as when the first settlement appeared, between the sixth and ninth century.

The 1890 map shows the location of ‘The Cock’ public house and as for the origin of the pubs name, reluctant though I was to ‘Google’ that word, there was such a thing as a stop cock on a beer barrel. But equally, why would it not have been a Cock chicken, as many public houses were named after animals, royalty, places, etc. 

Another one of the things we will probably never know......

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8 hours ago, RLongden said:

Hollis Croft (previously Hollis Chardy Street on the 1736 Sheffield map) was possibly close enough to Sheffield to have been inhabited when Sheffield was being established, as far back as when the first settlement appeared, between the sixth and ninth century. 

I may be wrong here but I always thought the old name for Hollis Croft was Hollis Charity Street.

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I think that at one time there were two pubs on opposite sides of the London end of the Great North Road. One was called the Bull and the other the Cock. Any news was told in one and then the other, with some degree of exaggeration in the story, depending on the amount of alcohol consumed. This was the origin of the phrase "a cock and bull story" so I believe.

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I can go for that.... it’s explained here

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:cock-and-bull_story

This thread could have taken a turn for the worst, if we’d have got onto the subject of Jamie Oliver’s mobile pub..... which is actually quite rude if you say it to yourself and realise the connotation? How he got away with that on the BBC, heaven only knows?!

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