This was our second outing since September last year due to the lockdown restrictions.
We were very fortunate to be able to visit a new permission that had just been drilled with Spring barley and wheat with further drilling for vining peas.

The 7-acre field was rolled and destined for peas so we decided to survey that one first. The conditions were extremely dry with well defined roller lines to follow.
The first artefact to come to light was a lovely Anglo Saxon sceat dating to AD 710 and minted in York.
There were several ferrous signals as well as lots of lead which is usually a good sign that there has been lots of human activity there.

Speaking of lead, one of the crew had a strong signal registering 99 on the Déus control box.
After digging down over 24" a sheet of lead became visible and it was clear that the object was far bigger than the original hole so we had to enlarge the excavation.
At last, the lead bucket, as it was identified, was extracted. The estimated weight was 25-kilo's.

Apart from a few sherds of Medieval pottery, we recovered a Roman fibula, Roman coinage as well as Medieval coinage and artefacts. 
We decided to search the final headland and it was almost at the end of that search that we recovered a superb example of an Edward the Confessor penny. The coin was identified as a Sovereign/Eagle type penny and dates to AD 1056-1059.

​HD images can be seen here.

We managed to get out for the first time since September 2020!

We visited and old favourite that we hadn't been to for 15 months.
There was a choice of fields, some drilled last year and some that had just been 'worked' ready for drilling with vining peas.

The first field was a over a mile in length and was rolled making it perfect for detecting. However, the signals were very far and few between with thousands of tiny ferrous signals everywhere.

One of the team noticed that one of the other fields had been deep-ploughed and had potatoes in it last year. This year it had winter wheat drilled, with the shoots about 6" in length which was quite short for detecting. The downside was that it was a little too long in most parts for fieldwalking.
This field is 80-acres in size but we knew where the hotspots were located.
Surprisingly, only a couple of pieces of pottery and a few artefacts were recovered. This field had produced some spectacular finds over the years but we noticed on our visit 15-months ago that its 'finds-life' was nearly over as it has been properly 'battered' by us and two farming detectorists that live next to the field.
This shows that even after deep-ploughing, not a lot more exists within reach of our machines. Certainly not worth several hours of driving to get there and back anyhow.

Even so, of the limited number of finds, some of them were quite rare and unusual which sort of made up for the journey.

​With 10 Roman coins, fibula fragments and other items, the collection made a half-decent photograph. HD Images can be seen here.