Toward the end of 1939, the national treasures of Great Britain were removed from the national Gallery and Hampton Court and stored in a slate quarry in Wales. The Crown jewels were removed from the Tower of London and stored in a secret location until 1945. As far as I can determine, that location has never been revelead. Does anyone know where they were kept? If know one knows for certain, what’s the best guess? Why keep the secret for 60 years?
Ack! I apologize for the atrocious spelling and grammar in that last post 
Why keep it? Perhaps they plan on using it again if they ever need to.
Educated guess #1: Switzerland.
WAG #1: The Vatican
Totally WAG: The U.S.A.
DSimmons: Any idea? You were there.
Canada. It was shipped in an unguarded container! :eek:
<grumble> Problem is, I can’t find the reference in my books</grumble>
Switzerland - is where the Nazis shipped their plunder (proven)
Vatican - where the Nazis shipped their plunder (suspected)
USA - what I heard
What’s so shocking about the container being unguarded? Garrisoning a brigade of commandos or palace guards or somesuch on a cargo ship would have attracted a huge amount of attention.
BTW: I’ve also heard that there were plans to evacuate the British royal family to Canada should it look like Britain was going to be conquered.
As it happens, I’ve just started reading the catalogue of the current Royal Treasures exhibition being held at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace. One of the introductory essays on the history of the Royal Collection by one of the Queen’s senior curators mentions the evacuation of the more important pieces to the Manod Quarry at Ffestiniog and states, as an aside, that the gemstones from the Crown Jewels were removed and hidden. This struck me as odd, as I had always understood that all the items of the regalia was hidden, a process which, in any case, would surely have been much simpler. Why dismantle them when everything could just have been hidden?
As for a location, it must have been somewhere within the UK as it is illegal to take them abroad. (There may have been some doubt as to whether they could be removed from England, which may have ruled out the Manod Quarry.) The story about them being shipped in an unguarded container sounds like a garbled version of the true story about the Cullinan Diamond being shipped to the UK by regular post while a battleship carried a decoy. My quesses for the location would be, in descending order of probability:
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Somewhere within the Tower.
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A Garrards’ vault.
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The country estate of one of the senior members of the Royal Household.
As to why the secret has never been revealed, the answer is partly because they may need to use the hiding place again, partly because the British government likes to keep any information secret (60 years is yesterday so far as British official secrets are concerned) and partly because the mystery adds to their mystic.
According to the Firm themseleves:
" The collection was moved to a secret location during the Second World War, but was returned to the Tower in 1945." – so they’re still not telling.
That would suggest (intentionally or otherwise), the Jewels left the Tower for the duration but I have no idea of where they went. I’d assume that had invasion come, they’d have gone to Canada along with the Royal Family (the latter, If I recall correctly, we know as fact).
I happen to know where a copy of the Spitfire plans were hidden during WWII, because it was on an acquaintance’s property. I’m not sure he or the government would appreciate me saying exactly where it was, but let’s just say it would take in-depth local knowledge, some shrewd guesswork, and a lot of searching to have found them.
Given that the Crown Jewels have enormous symbolic value as well as their enormous monetary value I would imagine that they took a trip to Canada (which is where the Royal Family planned on going if necessary). (As an aside - I wonder what happened to the Stone of Scone on the same basis)
THere is a fairly well rehearsed school of history regarding US opposition to having an alternative British Governement in Canada. Australia or Bermuda (where Edward VIII was Governor) were apparently the preferred US options.
According to Westminster Abbey, although the Coronation Chair was evacuated to Gloucester Cathedral, the Stone was buried somewhere within the Abbey.
Funny all this… I just came back from the UK, and while I was in London, I saw the Crown Jewels with my own eyes.
I think the bigger question is not “where did they hide the current Crown Jewels during WWII,” but “who has the original crown jewels?”
From what I could gather, Cromwell and his Roundhead cronies sold off the lot (except for the Coronation Spoon) in the 1640’s after beheading Charles I. The current Jewels, while certainly more spectacular, are not the original set.
They didn’t have eBay back then. Who bought them, and where did they take them?
Depends what you mean by the original set…
King John lost one lot in The Wash in 1213 (its a place not a process!).
They are regularly updated and changed.
George IIIs crown was recently sold to a private buyer (this was quite a big story as it was the last crown of the King of America) it was only the frame. The jewels had been removed.
They are continually improved and changed.
Only the Orb is very old
Exactly-they’re always being reset and re-used.
And then there is the private collection, which is passed down in the family-that includes a lot of jewels from the Russian, French, German royals.
The first thing to say is that there were always two sets of Crown Jewels - the coronation regalia and the state regalia. (Strictly speaking, there still are two sets, but they are both displayed together at the Tower.) The former, which were those kept by the chapter of Westminster Abbey and only used at the coronation, were genuinely ancient and it has even been suggested that some of the pieces might have been items removed by Henry III from the tomb of Edward the Confessor. The other set were ones which were in regular use and so tended to be replaced every so often or, in the case of King John, lost in the Wash.
Both sets were destroyed by Parliament in late 1649 or early 1650. Most of the major items were first broken up, with the gold then being melted down and the jewels sold. The accounts of the commissioners appointed to dispose of Charles I’s possessions record who bought the more important pieces, mostly professional goldsmiths or minor parliamentarian functionaries. It has been speculated in the past that some of the gold survived to be incorporated into the new St. Edward’s Crown in 1661, but the case for this is a very dodgy one. In 1660 the purchaser of the Coronation Spoon returned it to Charles II and some of the jewels, such as the Black Prince’s Ruby or the St. Edward’s Sapphire, seem to have been returned as well. Other gems presumably survive elsewhere, but none has ever been positively identified, partly because very little is known about the individual gems in the old regalia. Most would, in any case, have since been recut. (Of the other stones which had belonged to Charles I, the most famous is the Sancy Diamond and that later passed to Louis XIV.) The theory that parts of the present Ampulla were from the pre-1649 Ampulla has recently been comprehensively disproved. Investigations for the definitive catalogue raisonne published in 1998 established for the first time that the old Ampulla looked completely different. Some of the swords are now known to date from the early seventeenth century, but that is only because they were added to the collection at some point after 1660. The Orb dates entirely from 1661. In other words, the Spoon is the only piece from either of the old sets of regalia which unquestionably survives.
The Scottish Crown Jewels are older (although probably not as old as is traditionally claimed) because the Scots knew to hide them when the English invaded later in 1650.
What owlstretchingtime refers to is the frame of the state crown of George I, later used by George II and George III, which, along with the crown frames of George IV and Queen Adelaide, passed into the possession of the brother of the Sultan of Brunei when he bought Aspreys in 1995. He has since presented them to Prince Charles and they are now on display at the Tower.
I don’t remember where I read this, but I had heard that during WWII the King and one other man had personally hidden the jewels at the bottom of a lake on one of the king’s estates.
Now, I think that’s just a tall tale, as we know that they really hid them up their you know where!
That’s the very one.
Whereever the Crown Jewels were during the War, I am sure they were carefully protected by a plastic device manufactured by the Everlast Company. 