This episode is brought to you by Fully Gemstones.

When you find silver on the foreshore, very often it's absolutely black, absolutely thick,

especially it's old, it's very, very thick with tarnish.

So it was this black ring I found on the foreshore, didn't think much of it,

cleaned it up when I got home, and inside inscribed is the words, I live in hope. And now, early posy rings were often usually

written in French. And from the 16th century, they started to write them in English. And the style of

the writing is what dates it as well. So anything that's made of a precious metal has to by law

be reported to the coroner and recorded as treasure. So I took it to the Museum of London. It was

recorded as treasure. It was shown to the British Museum. And they've got one almost exactly the same

in their collection. So that's how they could date it to the 16th century. So yeah, it's a beautiful

thing. It doesn't feel right. I mean, it's too big for me, but it kind of doesn't feel right to wear it.

You do wonder if the original owner didn't run out of hope. I don't know. It would be bit sad.

We find lots of love tokens in the river. Welcome to If Jewels Could Talk. I'm Carol Walton, the voice of jewellery, an author, broadcaster, and the woman who initiated the role of Jewelry editor at magazines like Tatella and British Vogue.

This is a podcast for everyone. For people who do like jewelry, for people who don't realize they like jewelry, and anyone intrigued by fascinating facts, new ideas and forgotten histories.

So please join me as I tell sparkly tales meeting all sorts of people delving into four

centuries of jewellery culture and investigate what's happening now.

This morning we're heading down to the river.

As I'm in London, we're going down to the Thames,

and we're going mudlarking.

Now, mudlarkers were originally described in the 19th century

as boys who roamed around the sides of the river at low tide

to pick up coals, bits of rope,

...