Nugget from Eastern Transvaal

The history of gold production in South Africa rightly focuses on the development of its huge mining industry along the rim of the Witwatersrand Basin, following the discovery of the outcropping quartz reefs near Johannesburg in February 1886.

What is less well known is that in the preceding three decades, thousands of prospectors, including many from the gold rushes to California and Australia, had been searching many areas of the country for diamonds and gold. One area in particular, the Blyde River, near the village of Pilgrim’s Rest (some 300 km north-east of Johannesburg), proved to be a rich source of alluvial gold, with many small and some large nuggets being discovered in the mid-1870s. A few of these contained as much as 200 ounces of gold, reportedly, although none of them survive. As an article in South Africa’s Mining Weekly (28^th November 2014) indicated: “Unfortunately, no specimens of a large South African gold nugget exist today, having all been melted down into bullion in a bygone era where wealth and profit took priority over natural geological curiosities.”

But one, shown here, survives in the Bank of England. It was presented to the Bank by the Central Mining and Investment Corporation in 1937 and is described as:

“A specimen of gold in its natural state, discovered in Eastern Transvaal

Assay: Gold 7.36 oz troy

Silver: 0.074 oz troy

Quartz: 0.54 oz troy”