Will King John’s lost treasure come out in the Wash?
A METAL detectorist believes he has found the long-lost treasure of King John on a farm near a Lincolnshire village.
Raymond Kosschuk is ‘100 per cent certain’ the medieval artefacts he has unearthed belonged to John, who died in 1216 shortly after signing the Magna Carta.
The king is thought to have lost the treasure – including the Crown Jewels – on October 12, 1216, during a crossing of the Wash, an estuary that divides Lincolnshire and Norfolk.
Mr Kosschuk, 63, is convinced he has struck gold after his equipment picked up ‘overwhelming evidence’ of the treasure.
The mechanical engineer, from Skipton, North Yorkshire, has spent the past year testing the ground at the site in Sutton Bridge. Using equipment he designed to pick up anomalies in magnetic fields, he has recovered artefacts including hammered bolts, nails, an eyelet and a metal buckle.
Mr Kosschuk said: ‘I am 100 per cent certain that this is it. This is the real thing.
‘When I gained access, I isolated an area of high-value targets and it tested positive for elements of gold, silver, emeralds, sapphires and rubies.
‘The biggest attraction of this area I detected is an accumulation of silver. This tells me there is between 60lbs and 120lbs of silver but it could be more. I believe this was the cash box that King John was carrying.’
Mr Kosschuk believes King John became lost in a thick fog after setting off from King’s Lynn, in Norfolk, without a guide and followed by a one-mile baggage train of 2,000 people.
He added: ‘I have seen that heavy fog and in the 13th century they did not have compasses.
‘If the sun was blocked out because of the fog, they would have meandered off.’ Having found readings for horseshoes in sets of four, Mr Kosschuk believes that there ‘is no question’ that his finds will reveal the treasure.
He said: ‘Those horseshoes are completely damning evidence – there is no question.
‘The field is littered with this kind of find. I have never seen anything like the field itself. It is phenomenal the amount of readings it is giving off there.’ Mr Kosschuk said he expected to find items anywhere between 2ft and 11ft down and he hopes to start digging for the lost treasure with the help of a local farmer in the coming weeks. He plans to submit any finds to archaeologists and Lincolnshire’s finds Officer.
King John died at the age of 49 at Newark Castle, Nottinghamshire, just a week after losing the treasure. John’s reign, which began in 1199, was blighted by the loss of french territory to King Philip II of france. He is buried at Worcester Cathedral.
‘Overwhelming evidence’