An archeological fieldworker excavating a site in eastern Newfoundland has unearthed what could be the oldest English coin ever found in Canada. Research on the coin, found at the Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic Site, has confirmed it was minted sometime between 1493 and 1499. The artifact is expected to be put on display in time for 2022 tourism season.

Known as a Henry VII ‘half groat,’ or twopenny piece, the nickel-sized coin was minted in Canterbury, England, more than 500 years ago, according to William Gilbert, head archeologist and supervisor at the Plantation, who said he came to that conclusion after consulting Paul Berry, former curator of the Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum.

The coin features a stylized portrait of King Henry VII and a Latin inscription that says, “Henry, by the grace of God, King of England and France.” The other side features a cross and the king’s motto, also in Latin: “I have made God my helper.”

The coin was found by a site worker under 20 cm of soil near the northeast corner of the excavation, just beyond the remains of what was once a wooden palisade.

“It’s important because it sparks your imagination,” Gilbert says. “You just have to wonder when you look at this thing: how many hands did it pass through?”

The coin, he adds, is more than a century older than Cupids, which was founded in 1610.

Settled by Bristol, England, merchant John Guy, the Cupids plantation is the site of the oldest English settlement in Canada. The English colony at Jamestown, Va., was settled in 1607. By 1613, Guy and a small group of colonists had built several structures, including Canada’s first sawmill and brewery.

Gilbert discovered the former plantation in 1995 and it was declared a historic site in May 2011. By that time, more than 150,000 artifacts had been unearthed at the site, which now includes an interactive museum known as the Cupids Legacy Centre. The community is on the west side of Conception Bay, Nlfd., about an hour’s drive west of St. John’s.

“It is incredible to imagine that this coin was minted in England and was lost in Cupids over a hundred years later,” the province’s tourism minister, Steve Crocker, said in a statement. “It links the story of the early European exploration in the province and the start of English settlement.”

In 2001, an Elizabethan coin – dated 1560-1561 – was found at the same site, and at the time it was considered the oldest English coin ever found in Canada.