Five royal wedding rings, from the Queen Mother’s to Diana’s, were made from the same nugget of Welsh gold from the Clogau St David’s mine at Bontddu, and one gramme of it is still held by the Privy Purse Office

The wedding rings of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, The Queen, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and Diana, Princess of Wales “were all made from the same nugget of Welsh gold”, according to the Royal Family’s page on royal wedding traditions at royal.uk, which names the source as Clogau St David’s, a mine at Bontddu.

The same page sets out what is left of that piece. “There is still a minute sliver (one gramme) of this original piece of gold left, which is in the custody of the Privy Purse Office,” it says.

No weight is given for the nugget as it was first supplied, and no date is given for when it was mined. Clogau St David’s is the only mine named.

Five rings from one nugget

The list runs from the Queen Mother, whose ring dates from her marriage to the future King George VI, to Diana, Princess of Wales. Gold from the same nugget went into the ring Elizabeth II wore from her wedding to Prince Philip, and into the rings of Princess Margaret and Princess Anne.

The World Gold Council gave the same list and the same mine in a press release dated 27 April 2011, issued before the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Using the titles in force at the time, it said the rings of “The late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, The Queen, The late Princess Margaret, The Princess Royal and The late Princess of Wales were all made from the same nugget of Welsh Gold, which came from a Welsh mine, Clogau St David’s at Bontddu, North Wales”.

The two accounts differ only in form. Royal.uk names Princess Anne and Diana, Princess of Wales; the 2011 release calls them The Princess Royal and The late Princess of Wales, and adds North Wales to the location of the mine. Neither gives a date for any of the five weddings.

Welsh gold appears in other royal rings as well. The 2011 release said the wedding rings worn by the Earl and Countess of Wessex, as they then were, are made from Welsh gold, “possibly from the piece presented in November, 1981”, and that the Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, “wears his wedding ring under his signet ring”.

The gramme in the custody of the Privy Purse Office

Of the original nugget, royal.uk says, one gramme remains. The Royal Household’s account places it with the Privy Purse Office rather than with the Crown Jewellers, who hold the later supply of Welsh gold used for royal wedding rings.

The page gives no further measurement beyond the words “minute sliver” and the figure of one gramme. It does not say when the last usable part of the nugget was worked, or which of the five rings took the final substantial piece of it.

Neither royal.uk nor the World Gold Council says whether the remaining gramme has been moved or used since. The royal.uk page carries no date, but it opens with Princess Eugenie’s forthcoming wedding of 12 October 2018, so its present-tense account and its references to “The Queen” date from the reign of Elizabeth II.

The 36 grammes presented in 1981

A second supply arrived in November 1981, when the Royal British Legion presented The Queen with a 36-gramme piece of 21 carat Welsh gold. That piece, royal.uk says, “is held by the Crown Jewellers to be used for the Royal Wedding rings of today”.

The World Gold Council recorded the same presentation and said part of the 1981 gold went into the ring worn by Sarah, Duchess of York, in 1986. It did not name a mine for the 1981 piece.

On the 2011 ring, the release carried a statement from Clarence House confirming that Catherine Middleton’s ring would be made of Welsh gold. “The gold was given to Prince William by The Queen shortly after the couple were engaged,” it said. “It has been in the family’s possession for some years and has been in the care of the Royal Jewellers. There are no further details on which mine the gold was mined from. More information about the ring may be released closer to the Wedding Day.”

The statement added that there would be only one ring, “in accordance with the couple’s wishes”, and that the ring would be from Prince William for Catherine. Because no mine was named, the 2011 ring is not attributed to Clogau St David’s in the way the earlier five are.

That leaves two separate supplies of Welsh gold in the published record: the nugget from Clogau St David’s at Bontddu that produced the rings of the Queen Mother, Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and Diana, Princess of Wales, and the 36 grammes given by the Royal British Legion in November 1981 and kept by the Crown Jewellers. Of the first, royal.uk accounts for a single gramme, in the custody of the Privy Purse Office.