A couple was able to pay off part of their mortgage after digging up a treasure trove of historic gold and silver coins beneath their home.

Robert and Becky Fooks of South Poorton, Dorset, have discovered more than 1,000 coins dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, which have now sold for £60,000.

In October 2019, while digging with a pickaxe by the light of a flashlight, Mr Fooks found the coins in a ceramic bowl buried in the bare ground.

The British Museum suspects that they were deposited at the beginning of the English Civil War (1642-1651) by a landowner who wanted to protect his assets.

Mrs Fooks, a 43-year-old NHS nurse, told the Dorset Echo: “It’s a 400-year-old house so there was a lot of work to do.”

“We removed all the floors and ceilings and rebuilt the stone walls. One evening I was with the kids and my husband was digging with a pickaxe when he called and said they had found something.

“He put all the coins in a bucket and brought them home to me. If we hadn’t lowered the floor, they would still be hidden there. It’s amazing and fascinating to find the treasure.”

In 2022, another couple sold more than 260 antique gold coins for £754,000 after finding them under their kitchen floor.

The collection was discovered in 2019 in a pot hidden beneath the 18th-century floorboards of the anonymous couple’s home in Ellerby, East Yorkshire, and dates from between 1610 and 1727.

Spink & Son, the auctioneering firm that sold the coins, described the final sale price as “absolutely extraordinary” after predicting a price of £200,000 to £250,000.

After the collection attracted worldwide attention, auctioneers in London sold it in individual lots to dozens of buyers for a total of £754,000.

The auction house described the collection as “one of the largest hoards of 18th-century English gold coins ever found in Britain.”