28/09/2026
History Monday The Featherstone Pit Manager and the Pirates Treasure.
We live in one of the most storied of towns, we have a rich and evocative history, but just recently we have uncovered a lesser known yet gripping tale involving a Featherstone pit manager and the search for the greatest of all pirates’ treasures.
A gentleman by the name of Herbert St John Durnford came to Featherstone in 1894 to manage Ackton Hall Colliery. He lived at Ackton Lodge and he and his wife Anne were enthusiastic members of the congregation at All Saints. In 1899 they organised a garden party at Ackton Lodge to raise money to purchase a clock for the church tower. They raised £30. They organised other functions over the next year or so and purchased a large clock (the one we still see to this day) from the famous clock maker J Potts and sons of Leeds. It cost £95 (£15,000 in today’s money). The clock was set going on January 1 1901, the first day of the 20th century by Mrs Durnford in front of a large gathering, who then went on to tea at the old school at the top of Church Lane.
Herbert, known in Featherstone as ‘Hubert’ St John Durnford was born on 27 May 1859 in Eton, Buckinghamshire. He was baptised on 3 July 1859 and was educated at Eton where his father, the Reverend Francis Edward Durnford was a house master. His Uncle was the Bishop of Chichester.
St John Durnford stayed at Featherstone for nine years and decided to move on in 1903. There was a large leaving do for him held at Regent Street School. He was thanked for his fairness, his gentlemanly bearing and his charity. It was said that he had worked in harmony with the colliers. He was presented with a gold chronometer and a surveyor’s dial. Mrs Durnford was also thanked for the support she had given to her husband and for endearing herself to her neighbours. She was presented with a necklace comprising 177 pearls and three diamonds. The cricket club presented Mrs Durnford with a fine umbrella and thanked her for the interest she had shown in the club. She thanked them and said she had made many friends in Featherstone.
At the time of his leaving, it was said that Mr Durnford was setting himself up as a freelance mining surveyor. What the Featherstone miners and their families didn’t know was that he was going to work for William Charles de Meuron Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, the 7th Earl of Fitzwilliam, then the wealthiest man in Great Britain and they were about to embark on an adventure to uncover a legendary pirate’s treasure on a far-off island in the Pacific Ocean.
The legend goes that the fabulous ‘Treasure of Lima’ comprising chests of gold coins, jewels and a solid gold life size statue of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus was removed from the Peruvian capital for safe keeping during a siege in 1820. It was entrusted to a ship captained by the English sea farer William Thompson. A bad idea as it turned out, because Thompson turned Pirate, killed the Spaniards who were guarding the treasure and sailed to a remote place called Cocos Island off Costa Rica and Panama. He buried the treasure in a cave for safe keeping until the hue and cry died down.
The pirate Thompson never made it back to retrieve his treasure. On his death bed in Newfoundland, Thompson confided his secret and some treasure maps to a fellow sailor called Keating. Over time the secrets and maps found their way to a Royal Navy Admiral called Henry St Leger Palliser. This Palliser made some attempts to find the treasure in the dense jungles of the Cocos islands without luck, but remained convinced that the treasure was there to be found. He needed a wealthy backer to finance and equip an expedition and it was then he met the 7th Earl of Wentworth and persuaded him to join the endeavour. In turn Wentworth persuaded St John Durnford to assemble a team of Yorkshire Coal miners and experts in the use of explosives to join him in the quest to uncover the richest of all hidden pirate treasures.
They embarked on their quest in the winter of 1904 aboard a luxury steam ship named the Veronique out of Southampton. On board were Wentworth, Admiral Palliser, St John Durnford, a gathering of Wentworth’s aristocratic friends and a gang of Yorkshire Colliers. They took with them an Alderney dairy cow in order to maintain a supply of fresh milk and after reaching South America and navigating the Straits of Magellan they pursued with gusto aristocratic sports, organising a hunting and shooting party which bagged a hawk, a guillemot and an aardvark. They arrived at the Cocos island in early 1905 to discover a German national called Gissler living a Robinson Crusoe existence. He told them he’d been searching for the treasure for going on sixteen years already and found no more than a few gold coins.
The British party discovered the maps Palliser had provided were now useless because in the nigh on eighty years since they were drawn the topography of the island had changed beyond recognition. They decided to use high explosive and blast away a cliff face that they surmised must be the location of the cave where the treasure was buried. The decision proved a disaster. The blasting caused a huge landslide and many of the treasure hunters including Wentworth and a collier called Fowler were badly hurt. After just three days Wentworth abandoned the expedition, headed back to Panama, sold his ship and arranged for a passage on a steamer back to England for his party. All of those who took part were sworn to secrecy about what had unfolded and it wasn’t until recent years and the publication of a book, ‘Earl Fitzwilliam’s Treasure Island’ by Stephen Cooper and John Moorhouse that the story of this unlikely incident began to be known.
Herbert St John Durnford went back to the quieter life as a mining engineer and wrote many scholarly papers about the geology of the coal fields. He retired to his family estate in Longparish, Hampshire and lived out a long life until the age of 91 and died in March 1951. He probably never divulged anything about his search for pirate treasure.
Our photos show the seventh Earl Fitzwilliam and the Featherstone pit manager Herbert St John Durnford, in Montevideo on his way to find Pirates Gold.
