Nearly 70-Year-Old Football Pools Coupons Found at Buckingham Palace

^{Buckingham Palace / © Shutterstock}

During renovation work at Buckingham Palace in London, workers discovered Littlewoods Football Pools coupons dating back to 1957, The Guardian reports.

The blank forms were found among items that had lain hidden for decades beneath floorboards and in other parts of the royal residence. It is unclear who the coupons belonged to.

Littlewoods was once one of Britain’s most popular football pools. Players filled out coupons predicting match results, with stakes pooled into a prize fund that was then shared among the winners.

^{Littlewoods Pools football pools coupon, 1957}

The coupons are among a number of items discovered during the palace’s extensive renovation. Workers also found a 1949 ticket for whist, a card game popular at the time. The sixpenny ticket, embedded in a building stone, had been issued for a royal household staff social club event.

^{Whist ticket, 1949}

Other discoveries include pages from a 1966 edition of the Daily Express covering the imprisonment of those involved in Britain’s 1963 Great Train Robbery, old boots, a packet of cigarettes, a bottle of water, staff instructions from 1977 and a newspaper fragment dating back to 1889.

Buckingham Palace has served as the official London residence of British monarchs since 1837. Queen Elizabeth II lived in its private apartments, and the palace remains a working and ceremonial center of the British monarchy today.