THE JOY OF BEING A GOLD DIGGER
It’s the stuff of dreams — seven ‘detectorist’ friends who stumbled on £5m of ancient coins in a Somerset field. JILL FOSTER joined them on a new hunt — and unearthed something very unexpected...
Oh dear. as rookie mistakes go, this one is a clanger. I’m kneeling on a damp patch of field in ashbourne, derbyshire, clawing eagerly at a large clod of russet soil.
Seconds earlier, the £879 lightweight metal detector I’d been wafting over the grass had emitted a high pitch beep, indicating a possible ‘find’.
My stomach had flipped. I’d grabbed a shovel and dug an eight-inch square hole as directed. Then, grabbing chunks of earth, I’d crumbled loose handfuls in front of the ultra-sensitive probe.
What was hidden here? Could it be a roman silver coin? a piece of medieval jewellery?
a few feet away, Lisa Grace, an expert metal detectorist, begins to laugh.
‘are you wearing a wedding ring?’ she asks, noting that my machine only bleeps when my gloved left hand passes in front of it. ‘I should have told you to take it off. rings, watches, keys . . . I’ve even seen people go metal- detecting wearing steel- capped boots. You can imagine how excited they get — until they realise!’ ah. Perhaps I should leave this to the professionals. There were certainly no such mistakes earlier this year when Lisa, 42, and her partner adam Staples, 43, uncovered one of the most significant hoards of treasure ever unearthed in Britain.
While searching a field in the Chew Valley, North Somerset, with five friends in January, the couple from derby discovered 2,581 Norman coins, dating back to the aftermath of the Battle of hastings in 1066.
described by the British Museum as ‘massively important’ and the second most important find of Norman coins since 1833, the hoard could be worth as much as £6 million.
for
adam, a consultant for auction houses and metal detecting companies, and Lisa, a freelance antiquities cataloguer, it will be life-changing.
‘It’s surreal,’ admits Lisa. ‘I won’t believe it until the money is in our account. The final value could be anywhere between £3 million and £6 million and although the farmer [who owns the field] will get half of that, the remainder will be divided between the seven of us who found it.
‘of course it’s a lot of money, but it’s the culmination of 16 years’ work. I want to buy our own house in the countryside.’
adam adds: ‘I want to go to australia or maybe alaska — but I’m still trying to work out whether I dislike spiders or the cold the least.’
It’s an extraordinary time for the couple, who met in their late 20s and took up detecting in 2003. ‘I’ve always been interested in history and bought myself a cheap machine for about £100, and then we went hunting together,’ adam says.
‘But one machine is no good between two and, within weeks, Lisa had bought her own more expensive model. It was more sensitive, so she was finding more things. I bought a better model, then she did the same until we both had top- of- therange machines.’
Lisa smiles: ‘It can become competitive very quickly,’ she says. ‘But it’s addictive. even on your first trip you can find all sorts of history — a military badge, a musket ball, a 200-year-old coin. I’m half treasure hunter, half historian. It’s not all about the value but the history.
‘The Norman coins we found have a lovely, unique chinking sound. how many other people can say they’ve heard a sound from 1066?’
The pair freely admit their hobby is ‘geeky’ but with an estimated 40,000 other metal detectorists in the UK, they’re certainly not alone. Previously, they’ve discovered a collection of roman coins and a 500-year-old gold hatpin set with an amethyst. But their latest find is astonishing — and it came about purely as a matter of chance.
‘Five friends wanted us to show them how to use the latest model of machine and had secured permission from the farmer in Somerset to search his field,’ says Lisa. ‘It can take many phone calls to find a farmer willing to allow you to search their field, so we decided to go.
‘For the first four hours nothing happened. Then one of the guys found something and I knew straight away that it was a silver William the Conqueror coin [reigned 1066-1087] because I’ve found one before. They’re really distinctive and rare. a detectorist might find only one of these in 30 years. They’re worth up to £1,500, so we were really excited.
‘I swept my machine over the area and it started beeping so we began digging. We found a King harold coin next [ last anglo- Saxon king who reigned January 1066- october 1066] — much rarer than a William coin — and worth up to £5,000.
‘Suddenly it was very exciting. The rain started pouring down, it was like the gods didn’t want us to disturb the hoard, but we hardly noticed getting wet. We were in the zone.’ The group spent the next four hours unearthing coin after coin after coin. ‘I called the farmer but he didn’t seem bothered at all by a pile of old, muddy coins,’ says adam. ‘I said: “These are really rare, from 1066!” and he just said: “Well, you seem to know what you’re doing,” and gave us a couple of buckets.’ There are strict rules when it comes to finding treasure and Lisa and adam were keen to do everything by the book. ‘If you discover a pot containing coins and tip them out you’re destroying the context and so it’s best practice to leave it alone and let an archaeologist visit the site first so they can understand how it’s buried,’ says adam. ‘But these coins were all loose, they’d probably been wrapped in linen that has long since been destroyed. They knew they had to then register the find via the county’s Finds Liaison officer, employed by the British Museum. ‘If they’re over 300 years old and contain more than 10 per cent precious metal it means they are “treasure”. once that’s been declared they will be valued by the Treasure Valuation Committee — an independent voluntary body made up of experts and former museum curators.’ But as it was Saturday lunchtime, the Finds Liaison officers were not answering phone calls. adam managed to get through to the British Museum, who put them in touch with an archaeologist.
They took advice and were told they were allowed to remove the coins from the ploughed soil as they had been dispersed. By the time they had finished, they had what they estimated to be £5 million worth of coins in buckets. What did they do then?
‘We went to the pub,’ adam says. ‘But we sat very close to the window overlooking the car park. It’s not every day you have £5 million worth of coins in the back of your car. eventually we took them to the farmer who locked them in his garage overnight but we had a totally sleepless night.’
Two days later, the couple counted and sorted the coins. It took about four hours and the hoard weighed over 4kg. They identified some very rare coins known as ‘mules’, in which the front and the reverse of the coin don’t belong together.
For example, one coin has edward the Confessor’s [reigned 1042- 1066] face on it but the reverse belongs to a William coin.
adam explains: ‘The legal tender would change every three years so what probably happened here was that in William’s reign, the monier who was making that coin may have lost the die which stamps William’s face.
‘But rather than buy a new one, he might have used an old edward
If you believe your find is of significance, don’t move it! Ideally, an archaeologist should investigate the site to understand its ‘context’
You must inform the coroner within 14 days of your find. If it is more than 300 years old and more than 10 per cent precious metal, it is officially declared ‘treasure’ Henry I (reigned 1100-1135) was so disgusted by the quality of his coinage that he invited the ‘moniers’ to a Christmas party — and castrated the lot
die in its place.’ This was a criminal offence, however.
‘They could get into a lot of trouble because it’s a form of tax evasion,’ adds Lisa. ‘But these mule coins are really valuable now — worth up to £10,000 each.
The coins are now at the British Museum where experts will spend years researching them and trying to ascertain exactly what they would have been worth back in the day.
The couple have their own theories about the original owner. ‘A lot of the Harold coins were minted in Sussex, the location of the Battle of Hastings, so this could be someone who was involved in that who came back to Somerset, added to their wealth with the William coins and buried it for safekeeping,’ says Adam. ‘ Then they passed away without telling anyone the location. Alternatively, it may have even been someone who was fleeing for their life and they got cut down and the coins spilled into the ground. Whoever it belonged to was certainly rich.’ Then the money might have bought 500 sheep, but now of course the rare coins are worth so much more.
The couple are waiting for the Coroner to declare the find ‘treasure’ [formerly ‘treasure trove’] — when it becomes the property of the Crown. The Treasure Valuation Committee will then meet to decide the value, and the couple and their friends (who do not wish to be identified) will also receive an independent valuation. Whatever the eventual sum they share, it will give the couple more freedom to pursue the hobby they love.
The reaction from the metal detecting community has been overwhelmingly positive — with just a little bit of sour grapes.
‘Someone accused us of making the coins ourselves,’ says Adam. ‘And some people think we have the coins in our house. Just this morning we had a strange man banging on the door.’
Back to my own metal detecting efforts and Lisa is giving me some top tips.
‘ Look for patches of nettles because that indicates upturned earth,’ she says. ‘But watch out for the cow pats — they can give off a frequency too!’ (Apparently, they contain trace metals.)
There is an etiquette to follow, too. ‘If someone walks in front of you that’s a total faux pas,’ says Adam. ‘The farmers plough their fields in straight lines and so you pick a line.’
The machines are surprisingly lightweight to use and as I swing mine over the grass in a sweeping motion, it emits hundreds of beeps.
Although any metal detector will use a single radio frequency, the higher grade Minelab machines that the couple have, use five frequencies at once and can differentiate between ferrous and non-ferrous metals.
You can even programme your machine to detect only certain objects such as gold coins. Within a minute we’ve found a 19th century brass button — I’m told it’s worth around 4p — but over the next hour I discover only bottle tops and bits of tin. The most unusual thing Adam has ever found is a medieval religious relics box — a reliquary — containing silver coins. Worth around £2,650, it is now in a museum in Lincoln.
When the British Museum examined it later, they also found human hair, rabbit fur and even a 600-yearold body louse.
The detectorist community is very active, and the couple attend events and festivals all over Europe. Lisa says more women are taking up the hobby and children as young as six go out with their parents.
Their own incredible find is likely to inspire others and a spike in numbers is expected.
‘It always happens then a few months down the line you get a lot of people selling machines because they haven’t found anything. Only around 5 per cent of people who try it have the patience to keep going,’ she says.
The couple are clearly addicted — and there is something rather thrilling about it. But now they’ve found this haul, might it take the shine off their hobby? How could they ever top it? ‘ It does worry me,’ agrees Lisa. ‘ But we still love it.
‘ Being in the outdoors, walking in the fresh air and picking up little bits of treasure is relaxing. I’d still love to find a Celtic gold torc [neck ring] which would be very rare indeed. As for Adam, he’s still nurturing a dream. ‘It’s a cliché but I’d still like to find a pot of gold,’ he smiles.
Well he and Lisa seem to have come pretty close!