A KEEN gardener tidying up his flowerbeds was stunned when he found the muddy object he had picked up was an historically important coin dating back more than three hundred years.

It is not the first time David Thorpe from Sherston has discovered a little treasure in his garden.

Last summer he uncovered a silver sixpence from 1812 and previous finds have included clay pipes and musket balls.

But his latest accidental find has got the villager buzzing.

"I was just picking up a few ivy leaves on the surface and I saw it lying there. It had obviously worked its way to the top," he told the Standard.

"I immediately knew it was a coin because of the shape, but it was caked in mud. When I took it in and cleaned it up I was amazed to see the date on it."

Engraved on the coin in an elaborate font on one side were the date, 1651 and the name Thomas Davies. The other showed Sherston Magna with an image of a veiled Virgin Mary, which turned out to be the symbol of the cloth merchants’ guild.

Intrigued, he started researching on the internet and contacted village historian Cilla Liddington.

What he found was that the coin was actually a trade – a token produced for merchants during the English Civil War when there was a serious shortage of coins.

This was because the price of silver rose so high it cost more than the face value of smaller coins to actually mint them.

So traders risked breaking the law to mint their own coins to keep business moving.

"It was fairly common practice in London, but not so much in the rest of the country," said David. "There was only one issue in Sherston."

Two similar "trades," including one from Sherston were auctioned at Christies 10 years ago for £200.

"It hasn’t got a significant monetary value, but from a historic point of view it is massively important.

"It shows that Sherston was an important enough commercial centre for someone to be able to issue these coins."

Now David, a communications officer for Avonvale Training, wants to talk to the Athelstan Museum about a possible display.

But he has no plans to dig up his garden and search for more. I want to keep a little bit of the mystery for the next generation to find something," he said.