Our latest permission led us to a region we rarely get the chance to explore, making this return outing all the more exciting.
We’d marked out seven fields on our map, hoping our new landowner might own at least one. His reply surprised us: “I own all but number three.” That meant we could roam two pastures and four arable fields—ample ground for investigation.
With near-perfect weather beckoning, we opted to begin with one of the pasture fields, partly because of its proximity to a historic building rumoured to have endured a siege. Before long, our detectors began uncovering sizeable pieces of lead—some clearly melted down several times over, others intact sheets, likely all scavenged from the local village and church during times of unrest. Evidence of conflict was further confirmed by four musket balls, possibly fired from an arquebus, the 15th-century hand-held cannon that changed the face of European warfare.
In addition to a few modern coins, we made more thrilling discoveries: two groats—one of Edward IV, the other from the old reign of Henry VIII.
The second day took us to field number seven, all 28 acres under a mixed crop. Fortunately, some of it was still low enough for us to survey parts of the field and sample what history might lie beneath.
The first signal was particularly rewarding: a damaged, hammered coin, almost certainly an Edward I penny. The third signal wasn’t far behind—a cut-half, likely of Henry III. By the end, we had another eight Medieval coins for identification. Curiously, only a small shard of Medieval pottery surfaced, which we suspect was due to our inability to see much of the land amid the cover of growing crops.
After three hours, as rain finally caught up with us, we retreated to a nearby barn to shed our gear and prepare for the journey home—grateful for dry clothes after a day well spent.
We’re already looking ahead to returning, both to this field and the many others still waiting to share whatever clues remain about the people who once called these lands home.

After a stopover at a lovely seaside apartment, we drove inland to a farm we've visited since 2015.
This farm has two DMV's as well as a very large Roman presence.

We first checked out a field that had a previous archaeological dig, which presented 11 Roman coins.
The second area was a field that had maize growing, but had now been drilled with first wheat after a good plough.
Over 45 Roman coins came up from a small area that we first though there was a Roman shrine.

​A link to the images will be added shortly.

We visited our favourite 7-acre field that has been recently drilled with wheat, which provided perfect conditions for fieldwalking and detecting.
The weather promised to be quite nice with a gentle breeze and sunshine.

The first artefact was a Medieval iron casket key, followed by a mixture of Roman and Medieval items.
One belt mount was recovered with some organic material attached to it.
A lovely Saxon pin emerged, with a sceat, two styca's, three Roman fibula fragments, two hammered coins, a Medieval lock, and other artefacts.

The sceatta is in extremely good condition and is described as being a wonderful masterpiece of early Saxon art. The reverse of this coin is said to represent the battle between good (the bird) and evil (the snake), with several stages of this shown on series Q coins. The example here shows the last stage with the bird trampling the snake, cross before, interpreted as good triumphing over evil. It dates to 710 - 760 AD
One of the styca's looks to be Aerhelred II, 841 to 850 AD, with the moneyer being Forthred.

High definition images of the finds can be seen here.

We arrived on Lindisfarne to enjoy the last dig (10th year) that DigVentures are currently excavating.
Being quite late into the dig, the spoil heaps and trenches had already been scanned by other detectorists.
The only coinage to be found were actually in-situ in the trenches.

Seeing that we were there for 5 days, we had a plan to explore the area for more Medieval evidence.
We had targeted two farms that looked to be good regarding history.
The first field we were interested in was 10 miles from the landowners house.
We spoke to him and asked if we could fieldwalk and detect the field in question, he said yes, and gave us his business card so that we could contact him. This was also handy as it had his email address too.

The field was right next to a church that was steeped in history and dated back to Saxon times.
After several buttons (232 grams) and lead, we recovered just a few artefacts that were of any age. Nothing Saxon emerged, but what did come up was a Punic coin dating to 264 BC!
A couple of hammered coins were found along with many other silver and copper coins with a small amount of buckles etc.


We then visited another farm but there wasn't anyone around.
On the way back to Holy Island, we called in to a farm where there was someone in the yard.
We asked if we could look in a stubble field to which he said lots of people had already looked but only found a couple of coins. He said that they come very often.
He said there was an area where there was a suspected fortified manor house, so he led us there. It was a very small pasture field.
We switched on, and within seconds we had several signals.
We commented to the farmhand that this must never had been detected before to which he answered "Oh it has, several people had detected this field".
They must have used the toy machines you can buy, or they didn't understand the signals as we were finding pre-decimal pennies, and one of the finds was a door handle that was 3 inches in diameter, and only 4 inches deep!
We gave up and returned to the bliss of Holy Island.

​HD pictures of the finds recovered on the church field trip can be seen here.

Well, it was March since the last update!

We did manage to get out twice in April with some success.

The first visit was on a newly drilled field where we have recovered several Medieval artefacts, both metal and ceramic.
We also found some Roman coinage too.

One of the hammered coins was a cut-half penny of Stephen and Matilda which, according to the coin experts, is one of the "rarest hammered Medieval coins out there".
Another find of note was an Anglo-Saxon wrist clasp dating to the C5th - C6th. There was also a dress hook that was Anglo-Saxon.
Quite a couple of the Roman coins had been 'Saxonised', being pierced.

A fragment of a Roman glass bangle was amongst the recoveries.

One of the signals was ferrous, but there was something sweet about it.
The signal turned out to be a lovely iron Medieval key!

Another 12 hammered coins came up along with several other items, and LOTS of Medieval pottery.

The HD picture link to this day out can be seen here.

The second outing was to two different fields (both freshly drilled) on the same farm as above.
This visit produced more Medieval hammered coins, pottery, and other artefacts.
The HD picture link to this visit can be seen here.

So, the two outings were pretty good considering.

​We aren't too sure where, or when, we'll be out again, but we have some exciting projects coming up soon.

For a mixture of reasons, we have had a slow start to the second part of our 2024/2025 season.

In November 2025 whilst out detecting on a permission we have had for 5 years we arranged a meeting with the landowner who we'd never met.
His farmhouse was easily visible from the field we were in as it's farmed by one of his tenants.
After a quick call to him we agreed a time and set off.

We were greeted by his wife and invited in for a cup of tea as the landowner wasn't there. I looked at my 'phone (I'd put it on silent mode entering the house) and saw that he'd text me saying he was going to be 30 minutes late.
We had a lovely chat with his wife and son, and showed them some of the finds we had made that day and pictured from other surveys that are stored on our online image website, Flickr.

He arrived and looked at our field images of the surrounding farmhouse and other farms he owned about 15 miles away.
He advised us to look at the ones in stubble as the ones around the house were shooting grounds and would be unavailable until the end of January 2025.
He also said we'd split anything of value 50/50 and to fill our boots!
When the other fields are available in February 2025, he said "knock yourselves out".

March 1st arrived which saw our first chance of visiting these new fields.
The field we chose had been drilled the previous October with Winter Wheat.
We hit a hotspot which produced some Roman pottery and 26 Roman coins.
There wasn't much iron or lead which we found quite odd when looking at the amount of other evidence found.

By 3pm we were worn-out with the soil being quite 'sticky' earlier on in the day adding extra weight to our wellingtons.

​All the HD images can be seen here.

We've got off to a bumpy start for the coming season with no surveys as of yet.
The only outing as such was the annual dig at our site in Yorkshire in August last.

We had a Skype meeting and made a rough plan for the way forward.
Part of that plan was to arrange a meeting with a landowner who has land that we'd part surveyed.
Checking the land under Stewardship amounts to 2500 acres spread over a wide area.
We've identified at least four areas with Roman and Iron Age activity with one being a large IA burial ground.

Coincidentally, we're visiting a neighbour of his to check part of a 23ha field that has a Roman ladder settlement in it.
​Fingers crossed that we can come back with a report that will spring us back on track for a pleasant season ahead.

We were kindly invited to survey at a site in Gloucestershire in the search for a lost Medieval village.
Five trenches were in place with one of them producing building remains.
Two Medieval coins had been recovered, one on this dig with the other coming up during last year's dig.

We checked out several areas at random (time was short) with no evidence of Medieval nor English Civil War items.
Normally, detectorists are overwhelmed with musket balls, but not one came up on this day. Strange that the castle was attacked by 500 Parliamentary troops, then used as a campsite for Charles Ist.

The coinage that did come up was all decimal showing that the grounds had been used by the public from 1971.

Hopefully, we'll return to survey an area away from the archaeologists current centre of focus and find the clues that are missing.

It's interesting to see the phycology behind metal-detectorists ways of thinking and applied methodology to achieve their dreams and desires.

Some dream of finding riches beyond their wildest dreams.
Others, more realistically, desire to find things such as a Medieval hammered coin or Roman brooch for instance.

The first prerequisite is to actually search where there are actually these objects in the ground.
I know that sounds obvious, but it's amazing how many detectorists will search areas without even researching if there's been any history there at all.
I also accept that some may be very, very lucky indeed, and find something that satisfies the two above dreams/desires.

The research thing has been covered in an earlier post.

So, lets look at the search technique side of things.

All detectorists know that you have to walk over an object (within detector parameters) to find it.
What is humorous is that many detectorists would love a detector that could go an inch or two deeper, yet neglect that that their coils miss several inches, if not several feet to either side of the coil.
This is caused by a detection method called 'snail-trailing' or a random walk in the countryside.
Using the 'snail-trail' method results in the detectorist missing several square feet of the search field/area. This could amount to at least 50% of the field!
You can imagine just how many possible Medieval hammered coins could be hidden in those missed areas.
This is where you get the scenario when a detectorist has searched a field for 20-years and never found much and all of a sudden, they find that hammered/Roman coin.

There is a simple formula that will let you know how long it will take to search a field/area so that you know how long it will take to cover that field/area FULLY.

Here goes..... it will take you a MINIMUM of four-and-a-half hours to search ONE acre fully, minimum, and that's without digging a signal!
So, that's 0.22 (about a fifth) of an acre each hour or 900 square metres.

This is the easy bit..... a 10-acre field WILL take a minimum of FOURTY-FIVE hours to search FULLY without stops.

It's amazing how many detectorists will say that they've "battered" a 10-acre field in quarter of a day.............

On Saturday, we are going in completely the opposite direction to last weekend and heading to Shropshire to investigate a Roman fort there.

The landscape is full of different time periods but we're looking for mainly Roman evidence and the possibility of a little Medieval history too.
At the corner of the Roman field is farm that used to be a hall back in the 1200's and was still in use as a hall in the Tudor period.
A quick recce revealed C16th pottery so thats the Tudor box ticked.

The fields are all harvested and are in the process of being drilled.

This is another new permission on a shooting estate and covers quite an area and one which I wrote to about 5 years ago!

​So, fingers crossed, we may find some of that Roman and Medieval evidence just below the surface of the new crop.....