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.
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.
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