This plate, part of a Spode dinner set, was buried by Arthur and Jane Maria Atkinson near their cottage at Hurworth in 1860 when they abandoned it during the First Taranaki War. Attempts to recover them later were unsuccessful until one of the sons of the then owners of the farm, James Smith, discovered the buried china in the 1920s. Annoyed by an order from his mum to dig the vegetable garden James stabbed his gum spear into one of the farm tracks and struck the buried stash. His brothers, Charlie and Richard, helped him dig the treasure up but it is not known who eventually dug the vegetable garden.