More Treasures Found

 Coins worth up to $290,000 found under kitchen floorboards in England

Miners find 500-year-old shipwreck filled with gold coins in Namibian desert

Buried treasure from 17th-century Spanish shipwreck uncovered in the Bahamas

Treasure Reports

 RESEARCHERS FIND PREHISTORIC GRAVE CONTAINING 169 GOLD RINGS

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/08/researchers-find-prehistoric-grave-containing-169-gold-rings/144425

One of the most exciting archaeological finds in the history of Irish art was unearthed on Tipperary's Derrynaflan Island by a man and his son using metal detectors.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220731-irelands-priceless-treasure-hidden-by-monks

Billionaire Explorer Reveals Lost Treasures of the Wonder Ship

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/wonder-ship-0017088

Repairing Coins and Artefacts

George handed me a 2 x 2 inch card­board coin holder and, with tears in his eyes, said: "Can you mend this for me?" I looked, in horror, at what appeared to be the shattered remains of a coin as George explained that it was once an Iron Age silver unit that he had been carrying around in his pocket to proudly show his friends.

Cardboard coin holders fold over the coin and retain it in a circular Mylar plastic window, created by sticking or stapling the two card halves together, they are then usually stored in an appro­priately sized coin filing or storage box. The holders are perfectly adequate for protecting robust modern coins under most circumstances, but they are too flimsy to protect fragile and brittle older coins other than in a rigid container with suitable packing to stop the coin holder moving around. Personally, I prefer the rigid plastic coin capsules for transport­ing old coins; even then, unless the coin fits snugly, I like to pack the coin within the capsule with jiffy foam or acid-free tissue.

If you need to join parts of coins or artefacts together in the way of a repair, ideally the join should be reversible so that it can be dismantled if there is an error or for some other reason. Similarly coatings (lacquer) may need to be removed to deal with internal corrosion. Paraloid B72 is a glass-clear, non-yellowing soluble plastic, highly recommended by conservationists for joining and lacquering metals. Joins can be easily taken apart and coatings removed by brushing Acetone over the object with a fine brush. Made-up adhesive and lacquer are available from conserva­tion material suppliers. However, the product contains a flammable solvent, which Royal Mail and most other postal services won't carry, so transport costs are very high. Neverthe­less I have devised a cunning plan to get around this. Paraloid B72 itself is available as solid plastic beads, which can be sent by post and the solvent, Acetone, can be sourced locally, so you can easily and quickly make your own adhesive and lacquer.

I am offering small bags of Paraloid B72 beads for dissolving in 50ml Acetone on Ebay as follows:

5gm makes 10% lacquer

10gm makes 20% lacquer

25gm makes 50% adhesive

25gm + 5gm makes 50ml each lacquer and adhesive.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/710-53481-19255-0/1?icep_id=114&ipn=icep&toolid=20004&campid=5337724341&mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fitm%2F352731084054

I recommend buying the Care+ brand 50ml Acetone bottles available at many local chemists and online from suppliers with transport arrangements.

If you buy Acetone in a small bottle like this you can safely make-up and store your adhesive or lacquer in the same bottle. If you buy larger quantities of pure Acetone - you don't want it coloured or perfumed as is often the case with nail polish remover -then it will be best to find small sealable glass bottles to use for adhesive and lacquer as Acetone will dissolve its way through some plastic bottles (HDPE, High Density Polyethylene is Acetone resistant). Acetone is used in glass reinforced plastic (fibreglass) construction and repair, so you will also find it at auto parts shops and yacht chandlers in larger quantities.

To make our adhesive we need to dissolve 25gm Paraloid B72 beads in 50ml Acetone to make a 50% solution; and dissolve 5-10gm Paraloid B72 beads in 50ml Acetone to make a 10-20% solution of lacquer (I prefer 10%). Using the 50ml or similar bottles of Acetone, you can just pop a few beads at a time into the appropriate bottle, wearing surgical gloves or using tweezers (as the plastic beads may irritate the skin), until the liquid reaches the top, screw the top on and shake or leave to stand until dissolved. Repeat until the appropriate quantity of beads are in solution, label the bottle and that is all there is to it. To make a repair, ideally, you will need three bottles, one each of adhesive, lacquer and pure Acetone.

The first thing I needed to do with George's coin was to lay the pieces out on a solid surface and fit it all together dry, with the design and breaks all matching up. I needed to work under a hands-free magnifier for this tiny coin and also had to use tweezers to handle the very small pieces. When I had the pieces together, I noticed there was a piece missing out of the edge. I discussed this with George, who said that the coin was like that when he found it and yes, he would like me to fill in the gap.

I use a machine vice to hold small objects steady while I work on them. The jaws of these vices are too deep to just put in slim objects like coins, so I use thin pieces of wood or Lego bricks, narrower than the object I am holding, to make a platform near the top of the jaws. When I am using adhesive or lacquer I put Silicone release paper (the backing paper for self-adhesive labels and the like) on the top surface of the platform, held in place by a couple of pieces of sticky tape, so that, at worst, the object being glued only sticks to the paper, which can be peeled off easily.

Starting with the largest coin frag­ment, I put this in the vice, making sure the edge to be joined was accessible and unobstructed. The vice has to be tight­ened very gently, and I mean "touch of a butterfly's wing" gently, otherwise the object you are trying to hold steady could bend, buckle or shatter. Once the main fragment was held, I placed the next fragment to be joined on alongside, with a small gap in between the two pieces. I then applied the adhesive generously with a cocktail stick to the broken edge of the main fragment, and pushed the smaller fragment firmly into place with tweezers and held it there for about a minute. The adhesive oozes out of the join but that isn't a problem as it will be dealt with later. After about 15 minutes the adhesive had dried, so the coin could be carefully repositioned in the vice to expose the next edge to be joined and the gluing process repeated and so on, until all the fragments were reunited.

George's coin had a roughly triangu­lar piece missing, which needed filling to make the repair stronger and at the same time improve the coin's appear­ance. Bearing in mind that repairs may need to be undone and fillers are not easy to remove, before any filling takes place a liberal coating of Paraloid B72 lacquer should be applied to the edges of the section and immediate surrounds so that the filler sticks to the lacquer and not to the coin itself. If it is necessary to undo the repair, the lacquer can be dissolved with Acetone and the filler will fall out.

A suitable filler is a two-part poly­ester resin, such as Plastic Padding or David's Isopon, originally formulated for car and boat body repairs but now used around the home too and readily avail­able from hardware stores as well as auto parts shops and yacht chandlers. The package contains two tubes, one of resin and the other of catalyst or hardener. To use the filler you squeeze out equal lengths of "paste" from the two tubes onto a scrap piece of say, plastic or card­board; mix the two together thoroughly and use within five minutes before the mixture sets rock-hard.

I placed the coin on a piece of Sili­cone release paper and had a cocktail stick and scalpel to hand. Using the cocktail stick I mixed the hardener with the resin and transferred the mixture into the gap, roughly shaping the filler to the profile of the coin. Just as the filler was going hard, I trimmed the uneven edge with the scalpel then left it to harden. It is important to get the repair as good as possible before the filler hardens as in this application; realistically, you are not going to be able to make any changes! To hard filler and you would have to dissolve out failures and start again. I could have attempted to carve missing features into the filler but since we can only guess what might have been there, I just left the filler with a rough surface to blend in. To finish off, I gave the hard filler a coating of silver Humbrol model paint. The final job was to coat the complete coin in Paraloid B72 lacquer, which fills any small cavities and effectively encapsulates the entire coin in a plastic film, holding it more firmly together. As the lacquer can soften the adhesive to the extent that the joins come apart, lacquering is best carried out back in the vice. With so many joins in George's coin I couldn't clamp across all of them so with the reverse side up, where the join lines were more prominent, I positioned the coin so that I could hold two main joins together and just watched that nothing came adrift elsewhere. Using a clean small artist's paint brush I coated the reverse of the coin with lacquer then looked for any solid lumps formed or left behind from the gluing process. As there were a few lumps, I brushed them out with acetone and they disappeared into the lacquer coating. Once the lacquer was dry, I turned the coin over in the vice and lacquered the obverse in the same manner. When that was dry I took the coin out of the vice, held it between finger and thumb, lacquered the edge and allowed it to dry. The repaired coin was now easy to identify in Ancient British Coins, as an Iceni, Bury diadem silver unit, which, because of its protective coat, could now be handled with reasonable care and displayed with impunity.

At the next club meeting, I handed the coin, in a coin capsule, back to George without comment to which George said: “That’s nice, where did you find it?" I quipped something about finding it locally and left George to look at his coin. Ten minutes later George came back to me and said: “That’s my coin isn't it? It looks better than when I found it."

Dowsing for detectorists - PART 1: THE L-ROD

The Penrith Hoard in the British Museum Copyright 2010 Ealdgyth and reused under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet 1:5 

I would imagine that all detectorists have an interest in improving the quality and quantity of their finds. Yet very few make use of a free technology that can bring spectacular results when employed alongside a metal detector. Dowsing probably hasn't caught on with detectorists because of common beliefs that either it doesn't work or it is impractical. My own experiences, however, have convinced me that dowsing does work and that it can be very easily put to practical use. 

Many years ago, having long had a casual interest in the so-called paranormal, I decided to give dowsing a try and bought a pair of L-rods. The instructions claimed that it was necessary to rest one end of each rod in the palm of each hand while supporting the rod loosely between the thumb and forefinger. I found this terribly uncomfortable; couldn't get them to work and didn't have a clue what to do with them if I did get them to work. I gave up on the idea of being able to dowse myself, and discarded the rods. There were two important points that I later learned from this experience: 

1. I had unwittingly fallen foul of one of the basic rules of dowsing - you need to be relaxed and comfortable with what you are doing. 

2. The fact that nobody really knows how dowsing works, tends to attract those with fanciful ideas on how you should or shouldn't dowse; there are no strict rules, you just dowse as you want. 

Sometime later, I asked accomplished dowser Jimmy Longton to dowse a map for me. (See post: To the Manor Drawn, February 22 2015). In addition to dowsing the map, Jimmy tried very hard to encourage me to learn his craft. I was still very sceptical, even though the British Society of Dowsers claim that: "Most of us can develop the art by practice and perseverance". When Jimmy told me of his find of a hoard of Viking silver brooches, I could see the improvements that dowsing might bring to my own finds. There appeared to be a more convincing alternative, however, the Long Range Locator. I bought an Electroscope and learned to use it with good results. 

About a year later, following a discussion on dowsing, my mother-in-law announced that she would like a pair of dowsing rods for her birthday. I thought she deserved a little more than two remodelled coat hangers so I splashed out on a pair of commercial rods. On her birthday she handed me the rods and asked me to show her how to use them. "They don't work for me" I explained, "But this is what you are supposed to do ..." With that, I threw a pound coin on the lawn in front of me and proceeded to walk towards it, rods in dowsing mode. To my surprise the rods crossed as I walked over the coin. Intrigued by my new-found ability, I experimented with L-rods and discovered that they responded to buried metal in much the same way as the Electroscope. I can only conclude that by using the Electroscope I had actually taught myself to dowse. 

There is no need to spend several hundreds of pounds just to learn to dowse. Jimmy Longton kindly allowed me to reproduce his rod design and dowsing work-out, so you can learn for nothing! If you already have a pair of L-rods, you can use them, if you like, or you can make excellent rods as follows: 

You will need 22 in. (56 cm) of round metal bar (brass is considered best) of diameter 1/16 in. (1.5 mm) to 3/16 in. (5mm) to make each rod. Unless you have easy access to round bar, I suggest you use two wire coat hangers (N.B. Measurements and angles do not need to be too precise to make a working rod): 

1. Invert the first hanger and measure 14 in. (36 cm.) from one side, along the horizontal bar then mark and cut through with a pair of pliers or a junior hacksaw, measure 22 in. (56 cm.) back from the first cut and make a second cut. Discard the hooked portion. (Fig. 1). 

2. Smooth the cut ends with a file or emery cloth. 

3. Using a pair of pliers or a vice, first straighten and then bend the shorter arm back to an angle of 135 degrees (Fig. 2). 

4. Measure 7 in. (18 cm.) along the shorter arm, from its end and bend this portion back until horizontal (Fig. 3), then turn the last 5.5 in. (14 cm.) up at right angles. Finally, turn the last 0.5 in. (1 cm.) of the upright inwards, at right angles (fig 4.). 

5. Lay the rod on a level surface and adjust it until it lies reasonably flat. 

6. Make a second rod from the other coat hanger. 

Health warning: The rods are perfectly harmless when used as described. If you wish to use them to play Conan the Barbarian, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe or act out any other fantasy, don't blame me if you puncture your eyeball or any other part of your body. I would suggest that children using the rods should be supervised by a responsible adult. The rods can be made extra safe by folding their tips back on themselves, wrapping their tips with insulating tape or applying a blob of resin such as Araldite. 

Take the short arm of a rod in each hand so that the long arm is on the opposite side to your thumbs. Clench your fists around them loosely and turn your wrists so that your thumbs are uppermost. Tuck your elbows into your body and keep your upper arms in line with your body. Hold your forearms straight out in front of you, the width of your body apart and at whatever angle necessary to keep the rods reasonably parallel to the ground. The rods should now be pointing forward like extensions of your forearms. You may need to adjust your grip so that the rods are just free to move but not sloppy. When you are happy with holding the rods we can move on to the exercises: 

1. Hold the rods in the normal dowsing position as just described. Ask the rods to turn left. (You have to treat them like pets; talk to them nicely at first but if they don't do as they are told, shout at them - it works, honest!) After they have moved, restart the rods pointing forward. The easy way to get the rods to point forward is to drop your forearms so that the rods point to the ground then raise your forearms back to the horizontal. Ask the rods to turn right. Restart. Ask the rods to cross. The rods will cross on your chest. Practice until the rods move easily. 

2. Place a coin on the floor then take a few paces back from it. Hold your rods in the normal dowsing position and walk slowly toward the coin saying, (out loud, preferably): "I am looking for a coin". The rods will either cross as you pass immediately over the coin or within a few paces past the coin. Keep practising until the rods cross at the coin. 

3. Place a copper coin, a silver coin and a brass coin some distance apart on the ground. Hold your rods in the normal dowsing position and walk slowly toward the coin saying: "I am looking for a copper coin". The rods will cross as you pass over the copper coin but not the other two. Repeat the exercise with the silver coin and then the brass. Keep practising until you can differentiate between various metals. 

4. Stand sideways to a distant building or other large object that you know the location of and ask the rods to show you where it is. Give the full name of the place, i.e. "Show me St. James' Church". Clear you mind of everything else and concentrate. Once you get this to work, try standing with your back to the "target" (as dowsers tend to call objects they are trying to find) and see what happens. 

5. When you have succeeded with exercise 4, take your rods to the gate of a field, which is available to you for searching. Hold the rods as normal and ask: "are there any coins buried in this field?" The rods will cross if there are. Ask the rods to point to the nearest coin, then walk slowly in the direction indicated by the rods, turning, as necessary, to keep the rods pointing straight out in front of you. On reaching the coin the rods will cross. If you want to search for other objects as well as coins, ask the rods to find treasure. 

Keep practising. Once you can obtain a response from the rods in all these exercises, you are basically ready to do anything. Even if you can't do it all at first, you should find that the rods will produce some useful results in the field and you will improve with time. 

You may have noticed that in exercise 5 you reached your first buried coin but how do you recover it, bearing in mind that you have no hands free to carry anything? Hopefully you will have brought someone else along who can, at least, carry your metal detector and extraction tool, if not do the detecting and digging for you. If you are the independent sort, you don't need to have a partner, it's very easy to both dowse and recover targets by yourself. I'll show you how next time.

First Published in The Searcher/ November 1997

Pinpoint Probes

Following on from a previous blog, I am pleased to report that the repair I carried out on my Garrett Pro-pointer has worked and the probe is back in service. There are some YouTube videos which show you how to fix the fairly common falsing problem, which is caused by some bare wires shorting out. So if your probe starts falsing, just search on YouTube for ‘Garrett Pro-pointer repair’.

I picked up this Gold Hunter electronic pinpoint probe as a giveaway when I bought a new Detech Gold Catcher metal detector. It came with pouch and lanyard and you can buy them new, shopping around, for £30 or so, which is good value for money. As my Garrett Pro-pointer was playing up at the time, I put it to use and found it very good on inland sites. Both the sound level and sensitivity are good and the second button allows you to have vibration alone or sound and vibration. It is slightly slower switching on and off than the Garrett, which you may not think is important but the faster you can get your find out of the ground, the more finds you will make. The only real downside I found with this pointer was on the wet beach where it falses so much I found it unusable. But if you are only detecting inland sites and dry beaches, then this probe is great value for money.

Search for pinpointers on Ebay: (affiliate link)

Revising the definition of treasure in the Treasure Act 1996 and revising the related codes of practice

Hoard of Iron Age gold Staters

The UK Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which is ultimately responsible for the Treasure Act and Code of Practice, has produced a consultation document outlining proposed changes.  While much of the proposals are little more than housekeeping there are some material changes that are of some concern.

At present, treasure is defined, under the Act, as any object other than a coin, at least 300 years old when found, which has a metallic content, of which at least 10% by weight is gold or silver. And all coins that contain at least 10% by weight of gold or silver that come from the same find consisting of at least two coins, at least 300 years old. And all coins that contain less than 10% by weight gold or silver that come from the same find consisting of at least ten coins at least 300 years old. And any associated objects (e.g. a pot or other container), except unworked natural objects, found in the same place as treasure objects. And any objects or coin hoards less than 300 years old, made substantially of gold and silver that have been deliberately hidden with the intention of recovery and for which the owner is unknown. From 1 January 2003 the definition of treasure was extended on prehistoric (i.e. up to the end of the Iron Age) finds to include all multiple artifacts, made of any metal, found together and single artifacts deliberately containing any quantity of precious metal.

It is now proposed to add:

·         Any found object over 200 years old with a value over £10,000

·         All single gold coins dated between 43 and 1344

·         Two or more base metal objects of Roman date believed to have been intentionally buried together

There is also a proposal to impose a legal duty on the acquirer of a possible treasure find to report it and to impose a presumption that acquired treasure finds were found after the Treasure Act. This is fraught with difficulties. Under the Treasure Act rewards are split equally between finder and landowner (unless there is a different agreement in place) so will private acquirers report potential treasure if they stand to lose half its value if it is declared treasure? Potential treasure items were being found for 25 years before the Treasure Act, so assuming half of today’s find rate, that amounts to some 12,000 exempt treasures somewhere, many probably in inherited collections. The presumption of found since the Treasure Act seems contrary to English Law – innocent until proven guilty. Does the acquirer take the seller’s word for when the item was found? It is often impossible to PROVE when and where an item was found. Surely it is up to the State to prove it was found after the Treasure Act. The findspot is held up to be vitally important but in these cases, it is likely to be erroneous or completely lacking, so what is the point?

Pinpoint Probes

Garrett Pro-Pointer

An extremely useful metal detecting accessory is an electronic pinpoint probe; a hand-held miniature metal detector, identifying all metal by audio and vibrating. This gadget helps identify the exact position of the find in and out of the ground so you can not only avoid damaging your find but speed up find extraction considerably. Probes have other uses too. You can check the surface for shallow finds before you dig, which is especially useful when searching sensitive areas like lawns or when searching for a recent loss – you usually only need to check the shallow signals. Probes with a limited range, perhaps no more than an inch on a coin-sized object, have been around for a long time but a few years back Garrett brought out the Pro-Pointer which has a greater range and a larger price tag but is so much better at pinpointing than the old style probes. I bought a Garrett Pro-pointer when they were first available in the UK and have had 10 years of reliable service out of it but recently it started sounding-off (falsing) for no apparent reason, even with a new battery, which made me think it had come to the end of its working life.  I had a look around to see what was available and it seems almost every metal detector manufacturer now makes these probes in many colors. But the cost of some of them is bordering on the ridiculous – you could easily buy a good, brand new, entry level metal detector for the price! There are quite a few tests on YouTube and one thing that struck me was that the Chinese had got in on the act and they have a probe available at less than twenty pounds or twenty-five dollars, which includes holster, lanyard and shipping! The model in question is called a GP-Pointer and it tested quite well on YouTube so I thought I would give it a try. It is almost identical to the Garrett in appearance. Switching on takes about 3 seconds; whereas Garrett is instant. The GP is not quite as sensitive, nor as loud, nor vibrates so strongly as the Garrett. I didn’t find any of this to be a problem even when wearing headphones but I do have good hearing and did not need to wear thick gloves at the time. It may be difficult to use in a noisy environment and by anyone with poor hearing but for its price, I found it a great tool for the money.

GP-Pointer

As a footnote, I did a Google search for ‘repair Garrett Pro-pointer’ and found some YouTube videos which show you how to fix the fairly common falsing problem. I have taken the advice and had a go at repairing mine. So far so good, it still works but I have yet to field test it.

Round Pounds

The new 12-sided £1 coin became legal tender on 28 March 2017. The round £1 coin lost its legal tender status at midnight on 15 October 2017. There are still 169 million out there, which have not been returned to the mint. I am sure we will be finding them with our metal detectors for many years to come, but from what I have heard and read a lot of detectorists think they are now worthless. NOT TRUE!

Until further notice most UK High Street Banks will exchange round pounds for account holders at full face value. Some will exchange them over the counter; others will want them deposited into accounts. The Post Office has arrangements with most UK High Street Banks, as well as its own bank, and will also accept round pounds for deposit into a bank account.

There are currency exchange companies who will exchange withdrawn coins. One is currently paying 85% face for round pound coins and 75% face for withdrawn British decimal and pre-decimal coins. Bear in mind that pre-decimal copper (bronze) and brass coins are worth more than their face value in scrap. One old penny, weighing 9.45 grams, is now worth about 3p. In contrast the nickel-brass round pound weighs 8.75 gram and would be worth slightly less than 3p as scrap. Nevertheless that is an option if the coin is mutilated and not acceptable elsewhere.

Further details of profitably disposing of withdrawn and foreign coin finds will be found in Treasure Hunting for Profit.

Treasure Hunting for Profit: With and Without a Metal Detector

BOOK DESCRIPTION
If your dreams of finding treasure result in next to nothing, then this book is for you. David Villanueva draws on his 40 plus years experience to show you how and where to find, and profit from, many types of lost or hidden valuables in Britain, all year round. Treasure hunting is one of the few hobbies that can actually cost you nothing to take part but potentially bring you a fortune. Terry Herbert, the finder of the Staffordshire Saxon hoard received over 1.5 million pounds for basically a few hours enjoyable work with an old metal detector he bought for pocket change. But money is not the only reward; this fascinating pursuit breathes life into history and archaeology and offers healthy exercise to boot.
This book shows you how and where in Britain you can profitably:

• Use a metal detector
• Beachcomb for lost valuables
• Find Gold, Minerals, Gemstones & Meteorites
• Search for Fossils
• Hunt for treasure in innumerable places

If you dream of finding buried treasure, improving your finds rate or exploring new avenues for fun and profit… You can get the E-book and printed book from the SHOP at www.truetreasurebooks.net (Also available on Amazon, ebay, Smashwords and other online and offline retailers).
Please note: Most of the locations and contacts given in the book are based in the UK so if you live outside of the UK and are not planning a treasure hunting trip to Britain, then you will need to do some local research to get the best out of the book. Nevertheless I hope you all enjoy it and I always appreciate feedback– good bad or indifferent – it helps me be a better writer.

Airplane Hunting

 Bristol Beaufighter firing rockets

As Chairman of The Swale Search and Recovery (metal detecting) Club I was approached recently by an up-and-coming air museum to help look for wreckage of a WWII Bristol Beaufighter that had crashed on a local muddy foreshore during a training exercise. It was believed, or hoped, that there was a substantial amount of wreckage remaining although little had been seen above ground for some considerable time.

For the initial search I organised a party of half a dozen metal detectorists to search the area, at low tide, around where the plane was thought to have crashed, which the museum assistant marked with a clump of stakes. While plenty of spent ammunition was found, not one single piece related to the plane emerged, although the tide had not been as low as we would have liked.

For the second search, at a predicted lower tide, I took my aura camera and long lens instead of a metal detector and let the others carry on metal detecting while I stood at the marker stakes and proceeded to photograph the exposed foreshore piece by piece in a one hundred and eighty degree arc around the stakes. On dry land I could have linked the camera to a laptop and analysed the photos on the spot, but out on a tidal foreshore, it would not be a good idea so I just used the camera and would analyse the photos at home later. Although there were a few permanent seamarks to help frame the photos, it was mainly guesswork where I was pointing the camera as featureless foreshore and open sea all looks the same. With the benefit of hindsight I could have used a compass and obtained a bearing for each photo. An assistant to use the compass to line me up for the photo and to note the readings would be a great help. Again the detectorists found only spent ammunition and nothing that could be specifically related to the plane.

I downloaded the photos at home and enhanced them with Arcsoft Photostudio. I was pleased to see that there were areas showing an orange aura (top photo) as well as areas showing no aura (bottom photo). I assumed I had taken photos fairly evenly around the arc and nominally assigned compass points to the aura photos. That gave me one search area approx North to Nor’-Nor’-East and another due South.

Armed with this information I organised another search, although the detecting party had now reduced to three only. Two of us went searching to the North and one to the South. We did not know how far away the targets were but guessed they would be less than 200 yards (or metres) as that was the optimum range I had been able to pick up a large target in the past. It would be possible to walk in the direction of the auras with the camera, particularly if there were compass bearings, and to re-photograph them at say ten-yard or metre intervals, which could be measured by pacing or a surveyors tape. Of course this would require another at-home analysis session to determine at which point the aura image is lost and determine that the target would lie between there and the previous ten-yard point where the image was captured. A further session on the site would be required to make the final location and recovery. Nevertheless we had some results. The South searching detectorist recovered a part of the plane’s ammunition box, meanwhile the two of us searching northwards discovered a 60lb rocket each, part of the plane’s arsenal. I also recovered a small piece of aircraft battery. So by using aura photography, we had actually started finding what we were looking for as well as defining where to look on future searches.

Part of ammunition box

One of the rockets recovered in two parts (dummy warhead at bottom) and minus fins

A Beaufighter being armed with rockets

HOW TO FIND BRITAIN’S BURIED TREASURE HOARDS

Every detectorist dreams of finding a hoard and this new book will increase your chances of doing so.

The rich history of the British Isles has led to the burial of thousands of hoards for many different reasons – some as offerings, some as savings or in an emergency, intended to be recovered later. Although of course nobody knows exactly where hoards are buried, understanding why hoards came to be in the ground will help you to search in the right places.

Covering the Bronze Age to modern times, this fascinating book, by David Villanueva,

also gives lots of advice on how to research possible hoard sites, from researching local maps and records to clues to look out for on Google Earth. Contents include:

• Tools & Resources
• The Bronze Age
• The Iron Age
• Roman Britain
• Saxons & Vikings
• Medieval Britain
• Religious Houses
• Battle Sites
• Modern Times
• Treasure Law

152 pages, A4, beautifully illustrated in colour. A must have book for all detectorists!

Available from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Find-Britains-Buried-Treasure-Hoards/dp/1897738625/ref=as_sl_pc_as_ss_li_til?tag=trutreboo-21&linkCode=w00&linkId=961d0dcc489de094b4b206f9590071bd&creativeASIN=1897738625

Jimmy Longton

It is my sad duty to report that my good friend, Britain’s foremost treasure dowser, James (Jimmy) Longton, passed away suddenly on 02 May 2015 at the age of 84 years. He was buried in the churchyard of his home village of Euxton, (pronounced Exton) Lancashire, UK, on 15 May 2015 following a service at Euxton Parish Church attended by around 200 family and friends, myself included. Rest in Peace, Jimmy.

I could relate many tales of Jimmy’s exploits but I’ll just stick to his main achievements in treasure dowsing for now. Jimmy’s major claim to fame is his part in the finding of the Viking (c. 930 AD) silver brooch hoard near Penrith, Cumbria, in 1989. The two largest (i.e. longest) thistle brooches in the picture were found in 1785 and 1830 (largest) in a field called silver field. Jimmy and his friend Gerald Carter located and investigated the field in 1989 and recovered five more brooches, which were subsequently declared Treasure Trove. The award was more than £40,000 GB Pounds ($60,000 US Dollars)...

The Penrith Hoard in the British Museum Copyright 2010 Ealdgyth and reused under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

NEW BOOK – Tokens and Traders of Kent in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

 

THE PROVINCIAL TOKEN-COINAGE
Coins traditionally contained the value of the metal they were made from, less a nominal amount for the monarch and mint master and could only be produced by Royal decree. By the sixteenth century the penny and its fractions had been reduced in size by inflation becoming inconveniently small to manufacture and use. The general population resorted to using token coins containing less than their intrinsic value of metal until the monarch provided sufficient usable coinage for the needs of trade.
Trade tokens were issued in three distinct periods, the first during the seventeenth century, 1648-1672. The second in the eighteenth century, 1787-1801 and finally the nineteenth century, 1811-15. As well as being collectable, like coins, tokens issued by tradesmen contain personal information such as name, location, trade and even spouse’s forename initial in many cases and will be of interest to genealogists as well as family and local historians. Metal detectorists are a large group of regular finders of these tokens, who will also be looking for a means of identifying their metal detecting finds.

AVAILABLE SOURCES
A number of eminent numismatists (including Atkins, Boyne, Conder,Dalton,Davis,Dickinson, Hamer, Pye and Williamson) have studied these tokens and produced extensive catalogues, generally covering the whole of a series. Until now the only solution to identification was to wade through these catalogues. The asking price for any of these catalogues, new or used, can be upwards of £50 per volume. These catalogues can be borrowed free from the Library but there are few copies in circulation and waiting times can be lengthy. Many of the catalogues were compiled in the 19th and early 20th centuries so some have been scanned and are available online. The problem with scanning old texts is that the scanner has no real comprehension of what is written and so records what it perceives and the result can be gobbledegook! A further problem is that genealogical information and full token details have been abandoned in more recent catalogues to keep the printing costs and cover price down. This serves the collector well but disadvantages not only the family and local historian but also the finder of excavated tokens where only parts of the detail may be visible.

TOKENS AND TRADERS OF KENT
The nature of tokens is that they circulated very near to their place of issue so that the merchant concerned could exchange or redeem them for regal coins. While 18th and 19th century tokens did travel far and wide, especially those redeemable in several major cities, they remained common in their home county. Seventeenth century tokens, those of London excepted, generally only circulated within a seven mile radius of their place of issue. Seven miles was the typical distance between markets where the tokens would have been accepted.
This book is written for the token finder, family and local historian ofKent. It catalogues allKent token details available including all genealogical and local information recorded in earlier books (details of some taverns, inns, and hotels have been updated). In all some 600 recorded seventeenth and around 50 eighteenth and nineteenth centuryKent tokens are included, many of which are illustrated.

An illustrated section on popular token designs aids identification and the layout allows you to quickly scan through to visually locate the token. The great advantage of the electronic book version is that you can use your reader’s search facility. If you find a token that has been excavated, it may not be completely legible. Using what you can see you will usually very quickly track the token down via the search facility. You can search on any string of letters or numbers, design, quantities of lines, shape, unusual metal, value, etc. and providing it is a Kent token, I am confident you will find it!

AVAILABLE AS PRINTED  BOOK OR E-BOOK

 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

To the Manor Drawn (part 2)

THERE was to be a five month wait until the trees were stripped of apples by the pickers, which gave me plenty of time to reflect on the previous search of the manor house site. After a battle with silver paper, a battle with the trees and about one hundred hours detecting I had wrestled out of the ground about twenty worthwhile finds. Pleased as I was with four hammered silver coins, three Roman bronzes and some nice artefacts, one find for every five hours of searching didn't seem to be an awful lot to me. Was there a way of speeding things up, I wondered?

It was during this time that I read of a detectorist making a number of good finds by employing a map dowser to identify the find spots prior to searching. Now this was food for thought! If I could know for sure where the good finds were before I even switched on my machine, my finds rate ought to go sky high!

The first problem was where to find a map dowser, for the dowser I had read about had very inconveniently passed away. The solution soon came from an advertisement in The Searcher: "I will dowse your maps for you ...Ring J. Longton".

Nothing ventured, nothing gained; having no idea what to expect, I rang Mr. Longton. Jimmy turned out to be a very friendly, likeable soul who had retired from the wrestling ring and developed a passion for dowsing. His major claim to fame in metal detecting circles was the locating of a hoard of Viking silver brooches which earned him a share of a £43,000 Treasure Trove award. What might he do for me, I wondered?

"What sort of area do you want dowsed?" Jimmy asked. Rather naively I replied: "Could you do the entire farm? - It's 300 acres." "I could dowse a map of the entire country but you would be lucky if you recovered anything, because I would only be able to pinpoint large objects to within a few square miles. If you want to find coins and the like, I'll need an A4 size map of a small area — a few acres at most." I made a photocopy of the plan of manor site and its immediate surrounds — about 30 acres in all and sent it off with the £10 fee requested.

A few days later the phone rang about 10 p.m. Trouble at work, I thought. Happily, it wasn't. It was Jimmy who very excitedly told me that he had just been dowsing my map and had been getting gold and silver signals all over the place. "That's some site you've got there!" he said. I bet he says that to everyone, I thought.

When the map arrived, I eagerly scanned it to see what jimmy had made of it. The first thing that struck me was that nearly all Jimmy's markers (over 80%) lay within the boundaries of the wood that had surrounded the manor house (a random distribution would have been 50%). The next thing I noticed was a row of ferrous markers which I knew immediately corresponded with a series of large iron stakes on the site. This was quite impressive especially as Jimmy lived 300 miles away and I had been very careful to reveal as little as possible about the site!

I noticed also that quite a few non-ferrous crosses were on the part of the site that I thought I had searched thoroughly. This reminded me of a conversation we had, where Jimmy had said that owing to various "technical" difficulties such as dowsing going deeper than metal detectors, I could have problems in finding the targets that he had marked. You really should learn to dowse, he told me. I had little faith in my ability to dowse traditionally even though Jimmy had sent me instructions on how to make and use dowsing rods. Years ago I had taken an interest, bought a pair of L-rods, found they didn't work and discarded them!

Coincidentally there was, at this time, a flurry of advertising and dialogue concerning a machine from the States that could find gold and silver, find it fast and find it from a mile away. They called it a long range locator. Now this did sound much better than a pair of modified coat hangers! The major snag, apart from it being by no means clear as to whether these machines actually worked or not, was its hefty price tag. I sent for the literature and convinced myself that, as litigation was America ’s national sport, the manufacturer would have been sued out of existence if their claims weren’t at least substantially true. What’s more, all my detection equipment to date had paid for itself so my hobby owed me nothing. I bought an Electroscope Model 20.

If you haven’t seen an Electroscope, it consists of a more or less rectangular box (similar to a detector control box) with three adjustable antennae protruding from one end. Underneath, the box is joined to a pistol grip handle via a gimbal which allows the box to pivot in the horizontal plane. The general idea is that you keep the 'Scope balanced, wave it from side to side to determine if there is anything worth finding out in front of you and when the machine indicates that there is something, the antennae lock on to the target and you follow in for the kill with your metal detector. Simple!

Reality was somewhat different. The machine was easy enough to handle but most perplexing in what it seemed to be locating. The first field test yielded a broken bicycle spanner. The second had two of us digging a hole three feet deep only to uncover the farmer's water supply flowing through an iron pipe! Further tests produced bits and pieces of mainly non-ferrous scrap but none of this gold and silver the 'Scope was supposed to find. Yet metal objects were turning up which at least showed the machine was doing more than just keeping me amused until the autumn.

I arrived back at the manor site, just as the last box of apples was leaving, clutching the dowsed map, a 30 metre surveyor's tape and my detector of course. The corners of the field were the obvious places to measure from and there were only three of them as the field was triangular. I ran out the tape to the centre of the first cross and started searching with my metal detector. There was no hint of a signal. I carried on searching, carefully working out from the cross until eventually about 20 metres away I received a good signal and dug up a dinner fork, 20th century silver plated. I don't know if that was the object that had caused Jimmy's pendulum to gyrate but it did contain a very small amount of silver and I didn't find anything else in the vicinity.

I moved inwards to the next cross. It quickly became apparent that the further into the orchard I went the more the trees got in the way and the more difficult it was was to translate the crosses on paper into a search area on the ground. I didn't find anything anywhere around this second cross. I searched around the nearest crosses to the other two corners of the field and drew a blank there too; perhaps not surprisingly as I had thoroughly searched that end of the site last season. Back to the drawing board!

The following weekend I took the Electroscope with me. I didn't find much other than four pence in old money but I did discover that the Electroscope could be used just like a dowsing rod — I could simply walk around with it and it would indicate the location of metal objects to the left or the right of me within a few square metres. All I then had to do was to search the defined area with my metal detector. Using the 'Scope like this it wasn't long before I was holding my first decent find of the season — a well-preserved large rumbler bell with a blacksmith's hammer in shield motif.

Having now developed a working method, I started searching at the opposite end of the orchard to where I had worked the previous season, systematically working along each row. Not far in, from a depth of eight inches a Roman dupondius surfaced. A lump of bronze I uncovered became recognisable as part of a medieval pot-leg when I later dug out a complete one from a depth of 12 inches. From out of another seemingly bottomless hole came one of the nicest small crotal bells I have seen. This one is pewter with a bleeding heart motif, in perfect condition and good working order.

Just before I reached the point where I had finished searching last season I found an 18th century silver cufflink stud engraved with an abstract flower design. In the very next row I unearthed a similar silver cufflink stud engraved with the letter "T".

I was now going over old ground, as they say, searching the area that I had "thoroughly" done previously. I was amazed at what I had missed, although it was mainly junk. Two good finds did turn up, however. The first was a penny of Edward IV, very unfortunately clipped as it was a scarce Bristol mint issue. This was the smallest hammered coin I had ever found for two weeks until a cut farthing of Henry III put paid to that particular record. With that, I had completed the search of the main site in half the time that it had taken me to search a third of it conventionally.

According to the dowser there were still four treasures waiting to be found outside the main site, one at the west end and three at the east. I tried the west first and almost immediately found an As of Vespasian in quite presentable condition. At 69-79 AD this was the oldest datable metal object I had ever found and that record stood for a very long time. Further searches in the West produced nothing of note so I turned to the east.

At the eastern end of the main site lay another former wood of four acres. I decided to systematically search the lot rather than just go for the three dowsed targets which were close together in almost a straight line. The first find of note was a small rumbler bell, damaged and minus its ball. The second was an old style petrol can top proudly displaying the legend: PRATTS. The third find was a penny of Edward I, in good order and on the same day this was followed by two signals that produced most of a Henry III long cross penny. The following weekend brought the four acre search to an end with one final find — a half groat of Henry VIII. When I plotted the find-spots onto the map, the position of the three hammered coins coincided almost exactly with Jimmy's crosses!

What I didn't know, of course, was how thorough my searching was or how reliable was Jimmy's dowsing. I therefore used the couple of months I had left of this season and part of the next, to conventionally detect some of the area again and to see if I could find anything to the north or south of the main site. In terms of finds it was a complete waste of time but it did convince me that I had recovered everything worthwhile from the site — a total of forty good finds (including nine hammered silver coins) covering 1900 years!
​

​From The Searcher March 1997

To The Manor Drawn (The Searcher, Jan 1997)

I suppose it was the searching of my mother-in-law’s garden with a metal detector that gave me the first inkling of how interesting the sites of old houses can be. Not that “mother’s” house was anything special; just a town house in a London suburb, built soon after the Great War. In one afternoon I found 52 coins and a ring. Everything was made of base metal with nothing earlier than Victorian but it was the sheer quantity that intrigued me. “What if it had been the garden of a Medieval house?” I thought. “Would I have recovered 52 hammered silver coins and maybe a gold noble or two?”

I thought no more about it and carried on searching the one very small farm that I had permission on at that time. This farm continued to be productive for some while nothing extra special but enough to keep my interest: one Roman, two hammered silver coins, a bucketful of Georgian and Victorian finds. Eventually finds started dwindling which precipitated a visit to the library with a view to finding a new and worthwhile site.

It is strange how it often seems that you are being lead to a place and this, my first serious attempt at site research was remarkably easy. Many counties had a gentleman historian or two who sauntered around the countryside a couple of hundred years ago compiling a dossier on places and events, often comprising several large tomes. The county where I live is no exception, and it was to this work that I turned to start my research. Looking a step ahead, I figured it would be easier to get search permission if I found a site close to where I was already welcome and began reading the chapter relating to that Parish. I hadn’t read more than a couple of pages when the words leapt at me:

“The manor houfe flood, for there hath not been any remains of one left time out of mind, in the midft of a wood of the fame name.” The author went on to tell me that the site was a Roman camp before the manor was built and gave the location by way of a farm name.

Consulting modern maps I learned that the farm still existed, but not the wood. I eagerly scanned several older maps looking for a more precise indication of the manor site but it wasn’t until I tracked down the tithe map that anything convincing emerged. The cartographer had obviously felt the fifteen acre wood important enough to name it on the map.

Having narrowed the site down to a workable area and ascertained that it hadn’t been built on — it was now an orchard — all I had to do was obtain search permission! My friendly neighbourhood farmer gave me the landowner’s name and address and suggested I write or phone. I decided that writing was the least painful and potentially the most effective since I could communicate my request clearly, without embarrassment and hopefully would not inconvenience the recipient too much.

It worked! Within twenty-four hours of posting the letter, the landowner phoned me: “I don’t know whether you’ll find anything” he said, “My father bulldozed the site some years ago; but you’re welcome to try.” (Incidentally I always write first when seeking search permission and I am usually successful either right away or after a follow-up visit if I don’t get a reply. The important thing is to have a good reason for wanting to detect on the land.)

The weekend took forever to arrive but at last I was off with my detector anticipating all the gold nobles I was going to find. After the first session all I had discovered was that someone around the farm had a penchant for chocolate bars and fancy cakes. The next search also produced nothing but silver paper. I couldn’t believe it! I re-checked all the references to make sure I was in the right place. By the end of the third search, having still not made one single non-junk find, I was starting to believe that my historian had been in collusion with the brothers Grimm. The fourth session just about confirmed it! Half way through the fifth search a silver coloured ring, just visible in a clod of earth, had me cussing the fancy cake fiend for starting on the fizzy lemonade, when I noticed the milled edge. It was a William III sixpence. After eighteen hours’ searching I had actually made a find!

Almost immediately I unearthed a crotal bell quickly followed by another and from then on it became a completely different site. Almost every visit over the next few months produced something of interest: a follis of Diocletian, a Medieval casket key, two Roman asses, two Medieval buckles, three Edward III pennies and a half groat. Some Georgian coppers gave themselves up, then two more crotal bells, a silver cane, umbrella or parasol ferrule, a livery button and a copper-alloy ring brooch. The next weekend after finding the brooch a particularly awkward extraction from tree roots had me staring at a silver pin in the bottom of the hole. I pulled it out; the pin seemed to have been part of a buckle or something. I passed the detector coil over the spoil which I had removed and was greeted with two signals which produced the source of the pin — two halves of a silver ring brooch frame. I chastised myself for breaking it, then noticed the tarnish which said “broken in antiquity”. Later, at home, with a smear of removable glue (the experts advised not to attempt soldering) the brooch was complete once again. Gentle cleaning had revealed that the brooch was completely plain except for a letter A on the reverse.

The apple trees had leafed, blossomed and now, full of developing fruit were becoming fragile to an accidental brush and very difficult to search around. I arrived at the site having decided this was going to be the last search for this season. The first hour or so produced nothing but silver paper (this is where I came in, I thought), then a sharp signal produced the only find of the day. This was a small enameled heraldic shield with a fairly long spike protruding from the reverse. I had seen horse harness pendants in this magazine but nothing like this.

Having abandoned the site to the farmer, at least for the time being, I now had a bit of time to try and have these last two finds identified. With much help from medieval expert Nick Griffiths, I learned that the brooch is fairly typical of thirteenth century style, the single letter A on the back, however, is unusual indeed. The consensus of opinions is that there are three possible solutions, none easy to parallel!

(i)“A” stands for the maker — unusual since jewelry is hardly ever marked by the maker at this period, and marks put on by makers usually give the full name — at least more than a single letter!

(ii)   There is a well-known passage in Chaucer, the prologue to the Canterbury Tales — describing the nun, (The Prioress), he says she wore “a brooch of gold ful sheene on which ther was first writ a crowned A and after, Amor Vincit Omnia” However, in Chaucer, the A appears on the front where everyone could see it, not on the back.

(iii) It may stand for a Saint’s name — e.g. Anne, or possibly the beginning of Ave Maria, the prayer to the Virgin, which was used as a charm against all dangers. If a Saint’s name, it might be a patron saint; in both cases these would be put on the back of the brooch to be against the person so as to give maximum effect!

The shield (picture top left) portrayed six beasts but obviously reverse. (In heraldry, all sideways facing devices should face left, when viewed from the front of the shield.) The reversal is probably the result of an incompetent metal worker who cut the mould the wrong way round. The style of shield appears from the 1280s onwards. It is likely that the object was a mount for a wooden casket or travelling chest. Initial thoughts were that the beasts were lions rampant which would have been the arms of The Earl of Leyburn if the lions had been silver or Lord Salisbury if gold.

Apart from not being able to fit a full lion rampant into any of the cavities on the shield, and every time I looked closely I could see the head and shoulders of a smooth-haired “cat” — I was quite satisfied until I discovered that the first incumbent of the manor bore the arms: Azure six leopard heads, couped at the neck, 3,2,1 or. (Picture top right).

Considering the relative scarcity of these objects it seems highly unlikely that someone in obscurity who had a coat of arms so very similar to that of the owners of the Manor itself, should lose his mount there. Further, as the border of the mount had obviously been gold-gilt, logic (albeit twentieth century logic) dictates that the beasts would have been gold. While gold itself does not normally deteriorate in the ground, the loss of the gold beasts could be explained by corrosion of the bond between the gold and the base metal. The contrary argument is that the mount clearly portrays more of the beasts than just heads; however, if the cavities on the shield could be taken to represent full rampant lions then equally could they not represent leopard heads? If the maker had made one blunder might he not have made two?

I’ll never know for sure, of course, but I like to think that the mount came from the first lord of the manor. I wonder if he’s left anything else for me to find?

On the Third Day of Christmas…

…I dug up what you see.

Using the Anderson rod to guide my Detech EDS metal detector, I was delighted to find this third or fourth century gold Roman child’s finger ring. The engraving on the bezel is of a palm leaf or branch, having the possible intention of protecting the wearer from disease. These rings are said to be rare in Britain but common in the eastern Roman Empire.

The bottom of the hoop has been flattened and this is so regularly executed that I believe this wasn’t accidental. As the child grew up, they would be unable to wear the ring on a finger and I wonder if it was flattened to wear, or possibly as a result of wearing, on a wrist strap. Under the British Treasure Act I have reported the find to the coroner and Finds Liaison Officer and we’ll see what comments the experts have.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year and hope you make some great finds in 2015.