In the 1960s, 9-year-old Simon White visited a medieval English monastery with his family. Encouraged by his father, White pried up some of the historic site’s 700-year-old floor tiles to keep as souvenirs. At home, he stowed them in an old toffee tin for safekeeping. And there the tiles stayed, forgotten, for nearly 60 years.
Recently, White—now 68 years old—was sorting through his belongings and he came across the tin. At first, he couldn’t remember where the red clay tile fragments, decorated with a beastly face and a dragon, were from.
“Fortunately, my mother kept very detailed diaries written in tiny, spindly handwriting,” White tells ITV News’ Mark Gough. “So I read them again … and I was able to pinpoint one day in 1967, a summer’s day, when we came to Wenlock Priory. And I thought, ‘This has got to be the best bet.’”
Located in the West Midlands county of Shropshire, the priory was founded more than 1,300 years ago as an Anglo-Saxon monastery, then refounded in the 11th century as a Cluniac monastery. It was one of many historic sites White’s parents took him to during his childhood.
“Of course, back then there was no visitor center or CCTV, and you could wander around these places willy-nilly, for free,” White tells the Telegraph. “[My father] literally stood over me while actively encouraging me to take these tiles; I stole three of them—which, in hindsight, was a dreadful thing to do.”
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