Bonanza year for treasure as detectorists hit pay dirt
AMATEUR detectorists are sometimes the butt of unkind jokes and stereotypes, but it would seem that they are having the last laugh, after a particularly lucrative year.
The average treasure find reported to the authorities last year was valued at £2,671, it has emerged, with a total value of £643,683 for the 241 treasure items with agreed valuations.
It is the first time the valuation committee has released figures for the average find, as the number of reported treasures continues to rise each year.
The Treasure Act Annual Report, which has just been published and records objects found in 2016 showed 1,116 worthy finds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 363 of which are considered so significant that they have been acquired by public collections.
The average valuation of £2,671 was thanks to numerous exceptionally highvalue items including the Leekfrith Iron Age torcs found in Staffordshire and worth £325,000, and a grave assemblage found around Winfarthing, Norfolk at £145,000.
A total of 60 items, or collections of items, were valued at more than £1,000, with finders’ fees being split between the detectorist and the owner of the land it was found on.
The median value for finds was £270, once numerous coins, jewellery and significant metal fragments were taken into account.
Hobbyists in Norfolk were particularly successful, with a total of 130 finds in the year, with Suffolk at 80, Hampshire at 62 and Lincolnshire at 56.
The most remarkable find came from a Staffordshire field: the Leekfrith torcs, four twisted neckbands later confirmed as the earliest example of Iron Age gold ever found in Britain.
The two men who discovered them had swept the field 20 years earlier with no joy, only to come across the find of a lifetime in December 2016.
In Peover Superior, Cheshire, an- other two friends found nearly 7,000 Roman coins in a field. Ronald Lees, 62, described how they had found wire, ring pulls and nails before his metal detector beeped on the hidden hoard.
“I was soaking wet and freezing cold, but all of a sudden nothing else mattered – I was ecstatic,” he told his local newspaper at the time. “The last person who held the coins could have been a Roman Emperor, a gladiator or a serf.”
The find has now been valued at £40,000 and has been acquired by Liv- erpool Museums. Landowners or finders of 86 objects acquired by museums waived their payments, preferring to donate them for the public good.
Michael Ellis, arts minister, said: “I applaud the large number of interested parties waiving their right to a reward for treasure cases. These donations have allowed museums to acquire finds that they may not have otherwise been able to, thereby allowing the public to enjoy and experts to study them.”
A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport study showed 1.5 per cent of adults in England had taken part in metal detecting in the past year.
Bafta-winning BBC show Detectorists, starring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook, has been credited with popularising the hobby.
Last year, the finder of a rare medieval ring said he was inspired by the show. Gordon Graham, 41, went metal detecting on the Isle of Man after enjoying the comedy and found the 600-year-old ring.
‘The last person who held the coins could have been a Roman Emperor, or a gladiator’