Today saw two-thirds of the team cover two different permissions.
The other 33% is sunning himself in Cyprus.

The first stop was at a field that was power-harrowed last week, of which we'd covered about three-quarters, and was flat as a pancake!
We got there and to our surprise it was rough as a bears behind. Closer inspection showed it had been drilled with OSR which had us scratching our heads. We thought, surely, this has got to be rolled!?
After 5 minutes, sure enough the machine arrives with a set of rollers 12.6 metres wide. We had a chat with the driver of whom we've got to know quite well and he said "carry on I'll have it done in less than an hour". He was finished in 35-minutes!

We had 6 hammered coins in the dusty and extremely warm conditions along with lots of small fragments of lead.
Sixpences represented by; George III, George VI and Queen Victoria were also recovered.

On the way to this site we passed one of our best Medieval sites but the crop was still standing.
We decided to have another look on the way home but still no joy!
Seeing it was still early, and we didn't fancy getting stuck in the Bank Holiday traffic, we elected to venture to another site we'd not been to for three years.
In fact, it's two sites-in-one as they are neighbours and the field we were interested in had been harvested.
The text to the farmer was interesting as I said "Hi Fred, we're up at Gill & Teds, please could we check-out the corner of your field?". He replied "For what?". There are just some moments when a text won't do so I had to call him whilst he was navigating a huge New Holland combine in the fields across the way. He then remembered who we were and said no worries, carry on.
We thought that this was a good chance to use the brand new line that Rob has made. We strung it out and started to survey down each side, hopefully passing each other about half-way.
Would you believe it, the first signal was a superb denarius of Antoninus Pius! What a start we thought........ it went slightly downhill from there lol with only a few grots to show for then effort.

We wrapped up after an hour or so as it was time to head home.
We passed another site on the way that had also been harvested but we'd already surveyed here when it was ploughed and drilled. We won't bother this year.... unless it's ploughed of course.

Our fingers are tightly crossed for this weekend in anticipation for our Medieval 4-acre site.

Detailed images of the days recoveries can be seen here & here.
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We are proud to announce that our first display cabinet has been installed at one of our premiere permission sites.

The cabinet is a hand-made bespoke piece crafted by a master cabinet maker Mathew Lang and is made from solid English Oak.
Such as is the attention to detail from Mathew that he wasn't happy with any of the hinges available in the UK and so he sourced them from Australia!
Amazing, considering that the hinges are at the rear of the cabinet and are out-of-sight!
The lid is a precision fit and is virtually airtight when closed and weighs in at over 35 kilo's and protected by tempered glass.
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The display comprises of artefacts recovered from the Estate covering a wide time-span, from Neolithic to Modern including Roman Samian Ware and Medieval pottery as well as coins from both era's.

The landowner is hoping that we can fill a second cabinet in due course and of course, we are happy to oblige.

We had the privilege of surveying a field that has been disturbed by new drains being installed and power-harrowed afterwards.
The result was 8-acres of ultra flat field surface to detect on.
Luckily, we had the roller lines to follow so it wasn't too bad to keep in-check.

This field produces lots of small fragments of lead and a small amount of C13th to C14th pottery. Today was no exception.
The first of thirteen hammered coins appeared after 5 minutes of tuning-in the machines using V4, standard GMP and the 13" coils.

Three denarii were also recovered and two may have been broken as votive offerings.
Medieval pottery was also collected from the field surface.

​We left the field with another 33% to cover at a later date.

High Definition images of the items recovered can be seen here.

​We were alerted at 13:40 by a vigilant member of the public that they had seen someone detecting in one of the fields that we have permission. The informant said the detectorist looked to be “on a mission” and was quickly making his way diagonally across the field of harvested OSR towards an opening into a field that can’t be seen from the roadside.
As we were already in the area we called the landowner, he wasn’t best pleased to hear that a nighthawker (thief) was on his land for the umpteenth time. 
I said I’d call him if we saw the thief in the field.

On arrival, we couldn’t see the thief in the OSR field and suspected he may be in the field that was out-of-sight of the roadside.
As we neared the out-of-site field, the landowner arrived in his 4x4 and we jumped in.
Seconds later, the thief appeared through the opening and we stopped him.
He had his detector and spade with him, of which had fresh soil on it.

He was challenged with the fact that he was of committing an offence under the Heritage Crime Act. He replied, “You’re kidding?” and then started shaking his head and mumbling something.
Firstly, he said that he hadn’t had any signals (as though this was ok and that he wasn’t going equipped to steal). Remember his spade had fresh soil on it so he must have had at least one signal.
Besides, the OSR field he crossed diagonally was full of green waste so it would be impossible not to get a signal.
Secondly, he then claimed to have “knocked on the door of a cottage nearby, but didn’t get an answer”. Again, he thought this was justification to still trespass and go equipped to steal.
Thirdly, he then said that he didn’t cross the field and travelled around the sides of it, yet he was seen walking across it and swinging the detector, and he admitted “he didn’t get any signals”.
Fourthly, he claimed that he thought there was a footpath alongside the fields.
He was asked to point out a footpath sign that he’d seen that would to lead him to this conclusion.
Of course, there wasn’t one.
He was advised that he should have consulted an up-to-date OS map to check access to any land.
He said he’d been detecting for well over 20 years and never trespassed before.
There was a distinct smell of bull excrement in the air at this point.
I asked him how he would react to people arriving several times to his front or rear garden and start digging it up without permission to be there? He tried the usual “chaff” replies to try and change the nature of the question. He didn’t succeed as I asked him again and again until he had to admit that he wouldn’t like it if that happened to him.

The police were called but they said that there was no-one available for over an hour!
However, we had an off-duty police officer on-call and arrived with a warrant card.
The nighthawker was taken to one side and questioned.
Details were taken and he was then allowed to leave.
The officer then visited the local police station to report the incident.

The field that the thief had crossed has been nighthawked for a long time and continues to be so as well as other areas on this farm.
Additionally, the field he came out of has also been nighthawked for several years.
This explains why we are only recovering small Roman coins and no large artefacts such as brooches etc. Obviously, his machine wasn’t capable of recovering small Roman coins but good enough to steal brooches and other large metallic artefacts.
There’s a lot of Roman pottery strewn over the field surface, but obviously, this is of no value whatsoever to the thief so it has been left behind.
This field is very large in size so it must have been nighthawked for well over 20 years!
That's 20 years' worth of heritage gone forever.
Compared to the farms we’ve covered that haven’t been nighthawked, the coin-to-brooch ratio evaluates to several brooches/artefacts that are missing/stolen from this site.

So, it just goes to show, a nighthawked site will only produce small items that have been missed by inferior machines.
We’ll keep you posted on the progress and results of this crime and the progress of the Infra-Red CCTV camera system that the landowner is looking to install shortly.
This will also spot any illegal hare-coursers too!

Our 2017/2018 season started twenty-two days earlier than last year.
This came about with one of our landowners in the Cotswolds indicating he'd harvested an area in Worcestershire we hadn't been to for three years.
This permission is actually owned by another landowner that we've never met. 

We arrived on-site at 8am with a half-decent weather forecast for the day.
There were several fields available, but one in particular was one we'd never looked at. We think the stubble was barley stubble as it was quite soft. The field was full of deep cattle footprints, some ten inches deep!
The problem with this was that, when a hole was made, the soil we turned-over dropped into a cattle imprint along with the find. This is were the XP MI-6 proved invaluable in probing the hoof print to locate the finds that had dropped into it.

It was virtually three years to the day when we were here last and the over-riding memory from that visit was that we'd never seen so much lead, EVER .......on any of our permissions.
Nothing had changed, there was just as much lead on the new field as the others. The pieces ranged from pea-sized fragments to chunks the size of palm guards. This must be the result of the Civil War activity that occurred in the area.
A lady walking her dog asked if we were taking soil samples, as it happened, she was the wife of the person we thought was the landowner.
Later on that morning, her husband came along and was very enthusiastic about what we'd found previously, and what we might find today.
We promised to email the report to him as soon as the pictures and information were done.

Amongst the masses of lead recovered some were lead artefacts, some appeared to be drilled musket shot whilst others ranged from weights to bag seals.
A couple of Medieval strapend plates, several buckles (with some lovely C17th examples),  C17th pottery and other Post-Medieval items.

During lunch, another lady walking her dog asked what were we doing. I told her that we were fieldwalking and metal-detecting. She said that she was the landowners wife and consequently we had a great chat and was very interested in what we do and how we did it. She added that they had land all along the river and we'd be welcome to search there. With that, she shook hands and wished us well.

We had a walk along the river to where the was an ancient crossing.
Coming towards us was a chap and his dog, Rob recognised the dog as the one that the wife of the landowner was walking. Sure enough, he was indeed the landowner. We introduced ourselves on a hand shake and instantly bonded with the landowner.
He wanted to show us a stone that he thought was interesting. It was led on its side and looked to be a gate post. It did however look "interesting" at eight feet in length and a little dished profile to its cross section. The stone object was ironically Cotswold Stone!
Again, he was very keen to see what we'd found and looked forward to the pictures and report via email. 

We were surrounded by orchards and blackberries and had several encounters with the local (and vocal) Green Woodpecker whose old name was a "Yaffle" which meant laugh/laughter/laughing.

Images of the day can be seen here.
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