Metal detectorist unearths £100,000 haul of civil war silver coins in field outside pub
‘After 10 minutes of searching I hit this massive signal and I thought this is it. We dug and saw the pot’
A METAL detectorist spent two nights guarding a hoard of silver civil war coins worth £100,000 for fear that “nighthawks” would steal the trove he had unearthed.
Luke Mahoney, 40, was scouring for precious metals near the Lindsey Rose pub in Ipswich with two friends last Sunday morning when he found a “beautiful” gold coin and a sixpence in the field. They took a break for lunch and returned to find a plough had cracked a clay earthenware pot buried 2ft beneath the ground.
By the end of the afternoon, Mr Mahoney, who has been metal detecting for more than a decade, was “delighted” to have helped unearth 1,078 silver, hammered coins, including some possibly from the 15th century.
“They were everywhere. It was pandemonium. After 10 minutes of searching I hit this massive signal and I thought, ‘This is it’. We dug and saw the pot. That feeling of scraping the dirt away and seeing the coins is indescribable,” he said.
The coins were likely to have been buried by a landowner who had gone to fight in the Civil War (1642-1651), according to valuation experts, who believe they will sell at auction for a minimum of £100,000.
To protect the finds, Mr Mahoney spent two sleepless nights in his car on the field watching for so-called “nighthawk” detectorists hoping to loot the coins under the cover of darkness.
Nighthawks, the term for illegal metal detectorists, have targeted numerous historic sites, including the Brunton Turret section of Hadrian’s Wall in their search for artefacts.
Mr Mahoney feared that the treasures he discovered would be sold on the black market by unscrupulous dealers who would use the history of the coins to boost their prices online.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “I had to stay up because I didn’t want other people going into the fields and stealing the coins.
“I was getting an hour’s nap here and there for around two nights in a row ... these nighthawks are professional thieves who make their living by waiting for detectorists to leave the fields and then scavenge anything that is left over.”
His anxieties seemed to have been validated a few days ago when he found a casing from a headphone in the field, indicating that someone else had sneaked in to search for any remnants of the hoard.
Despite the constant threat from these nocturnal scavengers, Mr Mahoney, who owns Joan Allen Electrics, a metal detecting shop in Kent, is encouraging more people to take up the hobby. He credits his success to the metal detector he was using, the Minelab Equinox 800, and thanks the owner of the Lindsey Rose for allowing him to search there.
Following the discovery, he contacted the local finds liaison officer, who is assessing the coins, and declared the treasure to the local coroner, as the law dictates.
“I want the coins to go to a local museum and the money from their sale as a little something for me and my two friends, Dan Hunt and Matt Brown, who found them with me,” he said.