A 9-Year-Old Stole Medieval Tiles. 59 Years Later, He Righted the Wrong.

Back in the swinging sixties, when a nine-year-old Simon White visited an ancient English monastery, his dad gave him a piece of advice: grab some souvenirs. Not postcards, mind you. Actual 700-year-old floor tiles. Simon, being a dutiful son, swiped a few, stashed them in a toffee tin, and promptly forgot about them for nearly six decades.

Fast forward to today. Simon, now 68, was sifting through his belongings when he stumbled upon the forgotten tin. Inside, red clay fragments. One sported a beastly face, another a dragon. He had no clue where they’d come from.

Luckily, his mother had a habit of documenting everything. A quick dive into her diaries revealed an entry from a summer day in 1967: a family trip to Wenlock Priory. Bingo. The mystery of the ancient tile hoard was solved.

The Return of the Relics

Wenlock Priory, nestled in Shropshire, England, is no ordinary ruin. It started as an Anglo-Saxon monastery over 1,300 years ago before going Cluniac in the 11th century. Simon's parents, apparently, had a penchant for taking him to places where history was literally underfoot.

He told The Telegraph that in the 1960s, there were no visitor centers or security cameras. Just open season for curious kids and their souvenir-hunting dads. Simon now calls his youthful pilfering a "dreadful thing to do." Which, fair.

Upon his rediscovery, Simon contacted English Heritage, the charity that now looks after Wenlock Priory. Assistant Curator Matty Cambridge was, understandably, "thrilled" to get these pieces of history back. Especially since tiles with these specific designs are rare, found only at a couple of other sites, making their Wenlock origin all but certain.

The priory itself has a storied past, founded in the late seventh century. It even housed a saint, Princess Milburga. After the Norman Conquest, French monks took over, building a grand new abbey between 1225 and 1260. That's where Simon's tiles came from — the floor of the 13th-century church and library.

Turns out, in the 20th century, conservators had relaid the floor, leaving some tiles a bit loose. Perfect for a nine-year-old with a toffee tin and a dad who encouraged historical scavenging. The returned tiles are valuable, not just for their age, but because the dragon design is unique to Wenlock. Plus, thanks to their cozy tin home, they’re in remarkably good condition — far better than their sidewalk-trodden brethren.

Simon is "absolutely delighted" to return them, even joking that his local archaeology society (which he joined in retirement) probably wouldn't approve of his past antics. It’s "only right and proper," he says, that they're back where they belong. And honestly, who among us hasn't had to atone for the questionable decisions of our nine-year-old selves?