Having a day off work simply meant a trip would be planned to detect somewhere. The question was where exactly? With harvest in full swing ploughed fields or even rolled ones are a scarce commodity as the farmers struggle to get the crop in before the next rain storm. For readers not living in Britain we have just had our wettest "Summer" since records began and that was I believe in the 18th Century. Anyway we found a suitable field, it was a field we knew well.
Some years ago it was once again the only field available and none of us were keen to go on it, it just looked so unpromising. However that was a big mistake the field was veritably crammed with mediaeval metal finds, buckles, brooches, buckle plates, belt fittings, sword fittings, rings and coins were in stunning abundance. Admittedly thereafter so were our visits and over ten years or so despite good things still being found the heady days of pockets and finds pouches crammed full were sadly over.
Arriving in the field I can’t exactly say we were anticipating finding much at all, it had only been lightly turned over and last year we had absolutely searched it with intensity. However on this day accompanying Dad and his good friend Steve were my two boys Bertie and Gus. For this mission Dad was in a bit of the doldrums because in his anticipation to get out he had left the boys X-TERRA 305 at home. However I already had my Explorer SE Pro packed in Steve’s car so it would have to be de-extended and made short for them.
Steve was using his favourite ever machine, as he calls it, the Safari. With the boys it took me a little longer to get ready and set up, by which time Steve was out in the thick of a good patch of cobble stones and broken pottery.
Dad was armed with the CTX 3030 and hoped that it would extract a few goodies from the soil for me, even on this well worked site. Very shortly Steve came back and showed us three finds of note a nice silver sixpence of the 1940`s a 14th Century small buckle and plate and a stunning 14th C Jetton in superb condition. Blimey I thought that was quick, especially on this site.
Within a few moments I was back on par holding a superb 13th C Buckle with floral floret designs and then a small bronze Roman coin. I could see it was from the reign of Claudius Gothicus, but also noticed something else through one side it had a hole pierced right through it.
Just one signal had zoomed from Rome to the Saxons, as despite this coin being a Roman issue it was a popular act for Saxons to pierce these coins and wear them as necklaces or pendants... brilliant stuff. Then came a very worn Edward 1st penny and some mediaeval period belt fittings. However it wasn’t just historically important finds that the high tech detectors would produce for us on the trip out this day. Indeed there would be an important spin off to the day`s proceedings.
Julian Evan-Hart
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