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Over four hundred years ago, someone residing in Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary bundled up a cache of gold coins and buried them beneath the floorboards.

The value of the money was considerable at the time. Eighty-one gold coins, guineas and half-guineas, was not a sum to be had by the average person of the time.

Yet who would bury that much cash under a public house?

And why?

Clearly, whoever it was never came back for them.

Modern-day builders working on the pub, said to be one of the oldest in the town, uncovered the coins that appeared to have been stacked and then wrapped in some material that rotted away over time.

The coins date from the 1630's into the early 1700's, a span of time in which the Catholics were being severely penalized by a Protestant government. The first of the Penal Laws came into effect in that time period. Catholics, the vast majority of Ireland's population, were barred from voting, owning a gun, or availing themselves of a Catholic education. Catholics could not leave their land to their oldest son, if they had any land, but had to divide it amongs all their sons equally.

It was an era of ever increasing oppression, so do you think whoever buried the coins was trying to get around the law and protect what little they had?

But where did the owner go, to never return and reclaim the gold?

The coins are now the property of the Irish State, as they are considered archeological artifacts that might be put on display at a national museum.

The story, however, is yours to create.