£5m field of dreams
Detectorist couple find UK’s richest hoard of ancient coins
A METAL detectorist couple have discovered one of the biggest treasure hoards in Britain – worth around £5million. Adam Staples and Lisa Grace unearthed almost 2,600 silver coins dating from the reigns of King Harold and William the Conqueror almost 1,000 years ago.
Although the find is smaller than the record Staffordshire Hoard of coins and artefacts in 2009, it is thought to be at least £1million more valuable. If the hoard is deemed important enough, a museum could buy it, making Mr Staples and Miss Grace instant millionaires.
Many of the 2,571 coins are in mint condition and each could be valued at anywhere between £1,000 and £5,000.
They were found by Mr Staples and Miss Grace in an unploughed field somewhere in north-east Somerset in January. The couple notified the county’s local finds liaison officer – as they were obliged to by law – and have given the coins to the British Museum to evaluate. Experts there have spent seven months cataloguing them and will unveil them for the first time this week.
Mr Staples and Miss Grace, from Derby, say the find is ‘absolutely mind-blowing’.
‘It was just truly unbelievable,’ Miss Grace told Treasure Hunting magazine. ‘Adam’s first spade full of soil came out literally studded with silver discs.
‘We were shell-shocked. We were so excited seeing the coins and to find a hoard was amazing.’
Experts say the coins are likely to have belonged to an important, wealthy person who probably buried them for safekeeping.
As King Harold II’s reign lasted just nine months, before he was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, coins from the period are very rare. The hoard is also thought to contain coins struck by previously unknown mon eyers.
Nigel Mills, a coin expert for London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb, said: ‘I am told the coins are absolutely stunning.
‘In the case of the Harold II coins, some will be from moneyers that we have not seen before.
‘Harold II coins are rarer than William coins and could be worth between £2,000 to £4,000 each. The William I coins will be £1,000 to £1,500. This hoard could be worth between £3million and £5million.’
If the hoard is not deemed important enough for a museum the coins will be returned to the finders who will be able to sell them.
The owner of the land on which they were found is also entitled to 50 per cent of any proceeds.
A spokesman for the British Museum said: ‘We can confirm that a large hoard of late Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins was discovered in January and has been handed in to the museum as possible treasure under the terms of the Treasure Act 1996. This appears to be an important discovery.’
In 2014, Derek McLennan, an amateur historian from Ayrshire, discovered Britain’s richest collection of Viking-age gold, silver and jewelled treasures in a Galloway field. The Galloway Hoard, as it came to be known, was hailed as a find of ‘global significance’.
Mr McLennan passed the collection to the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer, which in 2017 ruled it should be allocated to National Museums Scotland (NMS) on the condition it pay him £1.98million.
‘Studded with silver’