Still noisy at Weston

I do consider myself to be incredibly lucky to have a permission that keeps on giving, and it gives in many ways. The obvious being the finds that it has been producing which at this point in time include Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Medieval as well as more modern finds from the past few centuries. But this also gives me an imense amount of history to research and write about which every now and then filters through into Treasure Hunting Magazine in the form of an article.

The last article I wrote was about this very permission and it was the story of the journey that has taken place here up until the point of writing that article. Since then the permission has been out of bounds due to the crops going in, but one field has become available again and it’s the field that started to get busy with Roman finds at the beginning of this year. I feel compelled to write a short blog about it because on the first day back it has produced a wealth of history again!

This is partly down to the fact that I have upgraded my Equinox 600 to an Equinox 900. I believe that some of it is due to the capabilities of the new machine, but it’s also to do with me learning the new set up. Consequently I have been digging every signal to get an idea of what sounds and VDI’s match with what metals and I think the combination of these things has resulted in such a good haul in a single day!

Again the majority of finds were later examples of coins from the Roman occupation, a lot of which were in poor condition but there was a lovely Antoninanus of Allectus which stood out as you can see by the photos. There were also a couple of buttons, a buckle, a token of Admiral Rodney and part of a set of cufflinks which were apparently produced to commemorate the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza (1662).

The star find of the day has to be the Anglo-Saxon small-long brooch. This is the second Anglo-Saxon small-long brooch that I have found but it is the first of this square head variety. I knew immediately what it was when I pulled it out of the ground but what I didn’t realise is that it’s a rare find for North Hertfordshire. I found this out upon reporting it to Keith Fitzpatrick-Mathews, the curator and heritage access officer for North Herts Museums.

Keith said “Small-long brooches are uncommon in North Herts, and I’m intrigued by the fact it’s come up with Late Roman coins. It would be amazing if there were a post-415 Honorius or a Valentinian III coin (they do turn up, but rarely). Small-longs, by the way, are dated c 420-550 AD.”

It’s entirely possible that there might be an example of one of Keith’s coin suggestions in the mix of coins found on this day out, but we will have to wait and see if FLO is able to discover that. But wouldn’t it be amazing to find an Anglo-Saxon coin in amongst all this Roman history. To think that this small patch of land is suggesting that there has been a transition in cultures from Celtic to Roman to Anglo-Saxon is just a brilliant thing to discover!

The surprise find of the day has to be the broken Roman fibula catch plate. Some will remember the broken Roman fibula brooch that I found at the end of last year which was missing the catch plate. Well this is that missing catch plate! I will have to wait until I visit FLO later this month to collect the fibula to reunite the two pieces, but when I do I will be sure to include it in any further updates of the detecting journey here.

That just leaves me to sing the praises of the Equinox 900, what a machine. I was a little bit dubious as to whether there would be much of an improvement over the 600, but an improvement it certainly is. With new internal workings and a much wider VDI range the 900 feels a lot more capable. Because of this the separation appears to be a lot better and it feels a lot more sure of itself when it locks on to targets. It’s going to be another learning curve but it is made easier with the display and features remaining largely unchanged. So that just leaves new and exciting adventures to be had, hopefully for years to come!

Update…

A week after writing this blog I was back out on the same permission and I had rather an unusual find come up. Again I had a mix of later end Roman coins, but there was one which stood out from the others. Apart from the fact that it was in better condition than the rest it also had a very strange reverse.

At first when I brushed away the dirt with my thumb I could see the obverse was in relatively good condition, but the reverse looked completely worn. It was only on closer inspection that there appeared to be another bust on the reverse but it looked like it was concaved. I decided to email Sam Moorhead at the British Museum to see if he could shed any light on the anomaly to which he kindly replied…

“This is known as a brockage. It happens when the previous coin remains stuck to the die and strikes an incuse reverse with the obverse die, it’s a nice example. I think this is probably a son of Constantine I, dating to c. AD 330-41.”

It would also appear that this coin anomaly is quite possibly a rarity in the detecting world as Julian Evan-Hart commented that it’s the first time that he had seen a ‘brockage’ metal detecting find. This is one of the many reasons that I love the hobby, it has that ability to present you with finds which are unusual and once found are unique to the finder, a definite bucket lister I never knew was on my list! You can view the Portable Antiquities Scheme record for this ‘Brockage’ Roman coin on the button below.

Don’t forget you can follow my detecting adventures on instagram and read more in-depth articles here on the printable website. For those that do follow me, thank you for the continued support, it’s all very much appreciated!

The hobby becomes work!

So here I go again, yet another set of my metal detecting ramblings to make it into Treasure Hunting Magazine. This time it’s all about the Roman discoveries that me and a friend have been finding in the village of Weston. Up to the point of completing the article we had been on the permission at Weston for 8 months and this article is the story of our journey there so far.

This time I had a massive 7 pages dedicated to my efforts which is just a brilliant thing to see in the magazine. Quite how people responded to it I guess I will never know, but at the very lest it’s great to have it as a printed record of my finds as well as the experiences and historical discoveries that have been made.

As some will have gathered, Weston is where Julian Evan-Hart grew up and consequently he has a keen interest in the things we have been finding there. Once the article had been submitted to Treasure Hunting Magazine he was kind enough to write a little piece about it on their facebook page which read as follows…

NEW MATES AND METAL DETECTING MEMORIES – This is truly a marvellous hobby a great breeding ground for positivity and let’s face it over the last 2-3 years almost all of us have needed that. Several years ago a new-starter detectorist called James contacted me for some advice on an area I was familiar with in North Herts – Now I’ve never actually met him other than email but over the years we have become good buddies and I hope to one day rectify that non-meeting status. We can share a joke or two and in the last year or so he has blossomed into a regular writer for Treasure Hunting magazine.

SMALL VILLAGE – Well, recently he revealed that he had secured permission by way of a friend to search the fields in a small village. When I heard where I was amazed as its where I grew up from 1962-82 – He has written a feature about this to be published in a future issue and for me it was fantastic to edit it. From his photographs I knew those old oaks, (I had my first cigarette behind their thick and ancient trunks) that old and dense hedgerow was where I found my first Badger sett, the ridge of that field was where the local gamekeeper caught me and a current girlfriend of the time back in 1977 and later that day told everyone in pub and then my Mum LOL. Perhaps most importantly, in one of his pics is a small field where in 1972 I first switched on the button of a C-Scope fifty years ago. Not often that an Editor gets the opportunity to edit something with such a personal connection. But anyway to things of greater importance James and his mate have discovered the site of a previously unrecorded Roman building the site of which is splattered with coins and brooches and has become a project involving his FLO and other archaeologists in the area as well as having their coin finds assessed and identified by one of the UK’s leading coin experts -This is going to be a great read, all things good about our hobby, so thank you James. Just another example of the positivity that this hobby can, does and most certainly should deliver at all times. Shown is James’s hand loaded with coins from the newly discovered site of the Roman building  – a definite ‘Handful of History’ there. Have a great weekend all the very best Jules.

This issue has another significance for me as it is one that I have helped to produce. The publishers of Treasure Hunting Magazine have been very busy this year with other projects and so they asked me if I would like to help out on the magazine as they know that my profession is graphic design. It has been an absolute delight to mix work with my hobby in this way and I hope that I will have the chance to work on future issues of the magazine. My name has also appeared alongside Christine Jennet on the layout and design section of the contents page, it’s a small thing but it makes me smile every time I look at it.

As for the journey at Weston, this will continue and there will hopefully be some exciting developments later on in the year. To find out what they are just keep an eye on my @hertfordshire_history_hunter instagram account where you can follow everything that I find and what developments might be occurring!

All noisy on the Weston front

I’m sure most detectorists would agree that the hardest part of our hobby is obtaining permissions. I have been trying so hard for the past few years to get my own permissions outside of the couple of fields that my family owns but to no avail. I will carry on trying as I’m not the type of person who gives up that easily, but luckily for me I have an old school mate who has been more than generous by taking me out on his permissions. The last article I wrote about the lack of Roman finds at a villa site in Hertfordshire was one of his permissions and the article you’re reading now is much the same situation. But the difference here is that we started searching this site together, so from the off it felt like a level playing field, we both had contact with the landowner and we both arranged times to go detecting.

From the outset I had high hopes of good finds from this permission because the landowner revealed that the farm had been in his family for over 300 years and they had never granted permission for anyone to detect before now. He also revealed that there is a scheduled Roman villa in a neighbouring landowners field which borders with their land, could this permission get any better? Well actually yes, the landowner grows a hay crop so over the autumn and winter months most of the land is left to pasture, it is literally like being on the set of detectorists, heaven! Things did get a bit childish on the first day though when my old mate said “bagsie I get the field next to the Roman Villa”, at which point I started running whilst shouting “last one there’s not allowed on for a month!”. Things haven’t really progressed much from the school playground in the past 50 years.

The playground tactics employed to gain sole access to this particular field were soon to be proven pointless. On paper this should have been the field that produced the most given its close proximity to the villa, but in the 8 months that we have been on this permission it’s the field that has produced the least. I initially put this down to the fact that we started searching in the middle of summer with dry hard ground being a factor in masking what lay beneath. But even during the autumn and winter months when the ground was wet and soft it still didn’t really produce that much.

That’s not to say it produced nothing, in between the vast array of shot gun cartridges there has been the odd grotty Roman coin (5 in total between us), a huge lead pot mend and a massive lump of iron slag, all things which could be related to the villa in the next field. There has also been a few modern-ish coins including my first George III penny, even though it was pretty toasted it was still a joy to find.

The permission itself is pretty big, with a gorgeous 16th century country home at the heart of it. There is a lot of land here for us to search and given that it stretches between the Roman villa and a 12th century parish church there should be a lot of history for us to find. Our next target was a huge south facing slope which as luck would have it had just been harvested and was now left to pasture. My mate got chatting to a lady that used to help out farming this land and she told him that the south facing slope was referred to as ‘the vineyard’, could this be a Roman legacy?

I think it’s fair to say that this is where the historical journey really began as the finds started reveal the history we hoped that this permission would hold. My mate started things off on the first outing with a couple of hammy’s, but I wasn’t really getting that much in way of good signals. There is hardly any iron trash on this particular field so I soon learned that when I did get a signal it would more often than not be something good. Then on the 2nd outing I had some Roman coins come up, firstly a denarius of Hadrian which was a little beaten up but easily identifiable. Then I had a very worn dupondius which was closely followed by a lovely silver denarius of Faustina Sr. Because this was the first silver Roman I had found on this permission I decided to give it back to the land owner as he has a real interest in the history of his land.

I also did the same with the second piece of silver that I found as this time it had a direct connection to his family. The silver in question was a pendant of St. Bernard the patron saint of skiers! The pendant had the makers name Huguenin which was a Swiss firm established in 1868. The connection is that previous generations of his family used to spend a lot of time in years gone by skiing in the Swiss Alps. It would also appear that they spent some time skiing on this slope too and I’m sure St. Bernard appreciates seeing daylight again.

We spent quite a lot of time on this field in the months that followed and although we had some other good finds it didn’t really produce in the way we thought it might. I had a couple more Roman coins from it though, one was Marcus Aurelius and the other was Gordian III. I was really chuffed with Marcus Aurelius and I remember on discovering who it was saying, “that’s bloody Richard Harris that is”. I was so chuffed that I insisted that my partner and I watched Gladiator that evening. There we were watching Richard Harris with one of his coins sat on the coffee table and me with a stupid grin on my face. It’s only when I think of it now that I realise that my partner must despair of me at times.

So again it was getting to the point where we needed to extend the search elsewhere on the permission. During December my mate didn’t come out as much, and to be honest I didn’t blame him because it had turned pretty darn cold. It was only my hot flask of tea and thermal underwear that kept me out in the freezing temperatures, along with the thought that there must be a Roman hoard around here somewhere. During some email conversations with Julian Evan-Hart, he let slip that Weston is where he grew up, which kinda left me with a feeling of imposter syndrome. But he also divulged that a hoard of silver denaris had been uncovered near the church sometime in the 1800’s. I don’t think any records exist and the whereabouts of the coins is unknown so who knows if it is true, but it has kept my hopes alive of there being another stash of Roman coins around here somewhere.

During this month I took the search closer to the family house, my thinking being that if I were a Roman living on this landscape I would make a home exactly where the family have there home today. The landowner was ok with this so long as I didn’t search directly on the main lawn. It worked for me as I wouldn’t have felt comfortable digging holes in the front garden and the area that I was specifically interested in I was allowed to search. This was a small wooded area to the side of the main house that had some well walked paths and small open grassy areas between some of the trees. But again, nothing Roman, it was mainly more modern coins from the early 1800’s onwards which I guess are probably loses from members of the landowners family over the years. I also found a medal, it turns out it was from the Daily Mail Teddy Tail League celebrating the Silver Jubilee of king George V in 1935.

In these wintery months there was also some incredible scenery to take in on the frosty early mornings. It’s another of the great aspects of this hobby, being in the middle of the gorgeous countryside that North Hertfordshire has to offer. It’s these moments when I take the time to stand back and take it all in that I feel incredibly lucky to live in this beautiful part of the county. But beautiful frosty mornings aside, there was no evidence of Romans’ on this part of the permission, so where were they?

You might well be thinking that it’s pretty obvious, they were at the villa which is just outside of our permission and you’d be right, they were there. But I had a feeling that there had also been habitation elsewhere on the permission. Part of the reason for this was the research I did on the PAS database. In my previous article I wrote about the help that my Finds Liaison Officer, Matt Fittock gave in using the database to search for finds by grid reference. The results of this were interesting because quite a few Roman finds had been made in the square kilometer that included the Roman villa and some of the land from our permission, but outside of that square kilometer there was pretty much nothing. What interested me is that the earliest Roman finds recorded on the PAS database were from 260AD onwards, nothing before that. The coins I have been unearthing are much earlier than this, the denarius of Hadrian for example dates from 117 to 138AD, so it got me thinking that there might be dwellings in addition to where the villa site is now as my finds were all coming up outside of that square kilometer. This feeling was further enhanced with the occasional small lead pot mend I was finding as these are usually good indicators of habitation.

Between Christmas and new year me and my mate decided to give another field some attention. It’s one we had constant sight of because it was on the opposite side to the main south facing slope we had spent so much time on, but for some reason we didn’t think much of it. This was partly due to the big badgers den that was slap bang in the middle of it, but we managed to overcome that fear as curiosity got the better of us and boy did it pay off!

This field has it’s own entrance and we had permission to park on it which was great, it made things a lot easier should the need to escape angry badgers arise! The finds started coming up pretty quick with a few modern coins including a nice silver George III shilling, and then a little later a toasted Roman coin, possibly a dupondius but I wasn’t able to identify the Emperor. Then came a bucket lister for me, my first Roman fibula brooch, it was a real punch the air moment. Neither of us had ever found a fibula brooch and my mate has been detecting a lot longer than me, it even led to us dancing a little jig. The brooch was broken as they usually are but it still had a good portion of the spring mechanism which was good for dating purposes. As with a lot of my finds I ran this one past Keith Fitzpatrick-Mathews, the Curator and Heritage Access Officer at North Herts Museums and he dated it 40-60AD. So the dates of our Roman finds are now being placed at the beginning of the occupation which probably meant there was habitation here before that. There is one Iron Age brooch on the PAS database recorded from this area so maybe in future outings we will find our own evidence of Iron Age habitation.

My next time out on this field was New Years Day, but my mate was unable to join me so I was on my own for this one and he kinda regrets not coming out to play now. This was when the Roman coins started popping up in abundance, I think I had 9 come up in total on that day and all in close proximity to each other. I came back the next day, as you would, and again my mate couldn’t make it and I had another 10 coins out. It’s at his point I started to wonder if we had the beginnings of a hoard clipped by the plough, but in the next few outings when my mate could make it the coins started to become a lot more scarce. We had 39 coins in total between us, not a hoard but still a bloody good start to the year! The majority of these were toasted but there were quite a few that could be identified and dated.

On handing the coins in to Matt Fittock (FLO) I asked if he would be able to identify some of them there and then, but he was unable to because of the massive backlog of work he has to contend with due to our hobby becoming more popular during the lockdowns. I decided to try and identify them myself using the book ‘A History of Roman Coinage in Britain’ by Sam Moorhead the National Finds Adviser for Iron Age and Roman Coins at the Portable Antiquities Scheme (British Museum). I think I did ok but I wanted someone to check my homework to be sure of my efforts. I decided to be a bit brazen and I emailed Sam Moorhead directly and he very graciously replied having marked my homework. I had sent him a pdf with photos of both sides of each coin with my identifications and I didn’t fare too bad. There were a few I got wrong which he corrected and he also left a note next to one of them saying ‘nice coin’. I asked why he had singled out this particular coin (Constantine II) to which he replied “The bust with the emperor holding Victory on globe is scarce; it’s also a nice coin to look at!” It’s a pretty good feeling to be told that at least one of these coins a little on the rare side.

So now I was able to identify the dates of the coins which range from 260-383AD, a good spread spanning well over 100 years of the middle to later end of the Roman occupation. It’s interesting to note that these coins don’t date below 260AD and they were found bang on the border of the square kilometer that I talked about. But there was one coin I was unable to identify using Sam’s book and it turns out there was a very good reason for that, it wasn’t bloody Roman! The coin in question was actually Iron Age, a bronze unit of Cunobelinus (ABC 2969) to be exact, which is great as it means we have our first piece of evidence of habitation before the Roman occupation. It’s quite probable that this site had Iron Age inhabitants that later transitioned to a more Roman way of life and hopefully future finds will further support this.

So what are these finds telling us about this particular area? It’s worth noting that the villa in the neighbouring field was thought to be constructed with a low sill of flint and mortar with a timber frame on top with a tiled roof. Previous field waking searches produced evidence of this which led to the site being scheduled. The digging where our finds are coming up is constantly hindered by a lot of flint, tile and iron nails, is it possible there was a Roman building of some sort here as well? Because the field is pasture you can’t see any evidence of this on the surface by doing a field walk. So I decided to ask Keith if he thought it was plausible that a roman building might have been here and if not what other reason might there be for these finds coming up in the same place?

“Roman villa estates were dominated by the big house where the landowner (or his bailiff) and their family lived. But they were not the only buildings. Sometimes the villa would have a detached bath-house or a shrine to a local god and even small structures in their gardens that could have been the equivalent of summerhouses or gazebos. Sometimes, villa buildings come in pairs, often at right angles to each other. But the owners were too grand to farm their estates themselves. Instead, they had slaves or tenant farmers to do the hard work. Their homes would be away from the main villa, perhaps even hidden from view by tall hedges or plantations.”

Keith carried on to say, “What you’ve discovered could be any of these, if it is part of the villa estate. It’s also possible that you’re looking at a neighbouring property, a separate settlement that wasn’t part of a villa estate or maybe a religious site. I think that this is less likely, though, and that what you’ve found is another substantial building on the estate of the known villa.”

So it appears we may have stumbled on another potential Roman building, very exciting stuff and hopefully we will find more evidence of this as the detecting journey here continues. A few other bits and bobs have come up on this field including my first hammered coin from this permission, a lovely 16th century thimble and the remains of a Roman plate brooch. I also had another bucket lister, my first matchbox car! It’s nothing as grand as a Ford Mustang or Pontiac Firebird but a Kenworth Racing Rig will do very nicely.

My time on this permission is on going so if you want to keep up to date with the things that I find then you can follow my Instagram account where I post the majority of the stuff found from here, so just click on the link below. 🙂

A detectorists best friend

2022 shall be remembered as the year that saw the death of many a detectorists best and trusted friend, the humble spade. Ground conditions in the middle of this year became incredibly hard due to the long hot summer and it got the better of two of my spades in quick succession.

This lead me to doing a lot of research to try and find a new spade that would be up to the job in the toughest of soil conditions come rain or shine. I now find myself writing this blog because I think I may have found just such a spade, so I thought I would give it a little Hertfordshire History Hunter review. It’s funny, if you’d have said to me a few years ago that in the not to distant future I would be writing a review about a metal detecting spade then I would have laughed in your face, stranger things, eh!

Still, here we are and the spade in question is a hand made product by NobleMDT. After spending many hours trawling the internet for a new spade I finally came across this one on a fellow detectorists instagram account. The owner of this instagram account had just bought the spade after suffering the same issues that I had and he spoke very highly of it so I decided to check it out for myself.

NobleMDT has a dedicated Facebook page and an eBay shop where you can purchase their spades. Produced by Carl Griffin they are all hand made using high quality 316/304 stainless steel, which as I am finding out makes these spades incredibly strong. They come in a few variations where you can choose between a D or T type handle and the blade can be straight edged or with a serrated root cutter.

I chose the T type handle with the straight edged blade as this was similar in style to the previous spade I had which I had grown to love, even though it failed when the ground got tough (twice!). On first inspection when the spade arrived it looked and felt like a quality product, I loved the simplicity of the design and the welding is second to none, it’s obvious that a lot of love and care goes into making these spades. The fact that Carl is a detectorist shows as well, as these spades have been made specifically for the hobby which does make a big difference. Carl’s customer service is also worth mentioning as he was more than happy to answer my questions before I purchased the spade which was great.

On it’s first outing I threw it in at the deep end on the same hard ground that saw the demise of my last two spades. I was a little apprehensive at first but it didn’t take long for me to realise that this spade was well up to the task. That’s not to say that this spade won’t have it’s limits, of course it will, but those limits seem to be much higher.

With the conditions as hard as they have been this summer the slightly pointed end of the blade is great for initially peircing the ground. After that it always takes a heavy foot to move the blade back and forth to cut deeper into the ground which this spade does really well. This is in part due to the boot savers seamlessly forming the top part of the blade so you are able to put your weight and pressure right where it needs it to be able to cut through the tough ground. The boot savers on the spades I had before were located higher up the shaft which I believe was partly to blame for those blades buckling because the weight and pressure was being applied in the wrong place.

I always thought that the blades on my previous spades at 2mm thick seemed a little on the flimsy side which I think was done to compensate for the added weight of the boot saver. The blade on the Noble is 3mm thick and together with a generous concave and the clever design which sees the seamless boot saver form part of the main shaft weld makes for an incredibly strong spade.

The overall length of the spade at 35 inches is a little shorter than my previous one bit it’s still comfortable to use, my only niggle is that the T handle could be a bit wider so I can grab it with both hands when digging. At 1.4kg it’s lighter than my previous spades and I have no trouble carrying it around for hours on end whilst listening out for those perfectly toned beeps that get the heart racing.

Overall this is a great quality product, designed and hand made by a detectorist for detecorists, which lets be honest makes it feel that little bit more special! I’ve only had the spade for a few months but those months have been the hardest ground conditions I have experienced as a detectors yet and it’s sailed through with no bends or buckles. I have a feeling that this spade will be with me for many years to come, a trusted friend that I can rely on to dig treasures out of many a hole, along with tractor parts, canslaw, ring pulls, nails, shot gun caps, mint viscount wrappers… you all know the score!

Priced at £66.50 for the T handle and £68.50 for the D handle (with no extra cost for the optional root cutters) these spades are at the higher end of the market, but in my opinion they are well worth the money. If you want to take a look at NobleMDT spades then head over to their Facebook page on the link below, it’s always a good thing when we can support a small British business making a quality product, especially in these tough times!

Writing is now a hobby!

Since I started metal detecting again back in September 2021, I have become so passionate about it that I felt compelled to write about it. This gave birth to the Hertfordshire History Hunter blog in which I write about the things I find and the experiences I encounter. Writing the blog has also been a stepping stone into the publishing world, as I now write regularly for Treasure Hunting Magazine as you can see here with my fourth outing in it’s hallowed pages.

Never in a million years did I ever have think that I would enjoy writing as much as I do, let alone have any of my ramblings actually published. It just goes to show that creativity can be found lurking in places you would never have thought to look.

Having a passion for writing about metal detecting is a great way for me to stay involved in the hobby when I’m unable to actually go out and detect. Take this summer for instance, the hot dry weather has made it almost impossible to dig so writing has been the next best thing and for me it is almost as enjoyable as being out in the fields.

Almost as enjoyable? I say almost, because although I do enjoy writing I don’t get the same buzz from it that I do from being out in the fields unearthing a good find. But actually I need to correct myself here because there is quite a big buzz to be had from seeing my articles published, and there is an extra buzz when I make it onto the contents page as I have in this issue!

I’m grateful to this hobby for so many reasons, but mostly because it makes me happy. Having a pastime that I think about and take part in, in such a positive way has been a revelation for my mental wellbeing which I see filtering into and enhancing other parts of my life.

My Hertfordshire History Hunter persona has now expanded into a branded Instagram account which currently has well over 2000 followers. This has lead to even more opportunities opening up which is hopefully taking me into the incredible world of archaeology (follow the Hertfordshire History Hunter blog or Instagram account for more on this later in the year).

For now though I’m just happy to think of myself a dedicated detectorist, and hopefully anyone who follows the Hertfordshire History Hunter enjoys the content as much as I enjoy creating it.

Where are all the finds?

One sunny winter’s morning, I was standing with a friend on his permission, in the gaze of the late bronze age hill fort of Arbury Banks, (a Scheduled Ancient Monument) looking out over the site of a suspected Roman villa complex. From my view point nothing could be seen but fields, but I knew what lay beneath because during my research I found some old aerial photograph’s of the area which revealed what appeared to be the ghost of a Roman villa.

My friend made a comment about this permission before we went, he said “it’s a great place but it has been detected to death”. Alarm bells always ring when you hear a comment like that but it’s because of this and the subsequent outings on this permission that I feel compelled to write about it, as it left me with a certain amount of dissatisfaction. I know all too well the feeling of researching a site and then having expectations which are then ultimately let down, maybe I should learn to curb my enthusiasm in the future.

Much like the surveys I did for Keith at North Herts Museums I was full of excitement at the prospect of finding roman coins and artefacts but also like those surveys the roman finds were pretty much non existent, so were the Iron Age ones for that matter! That’s not to say there were no finds, of course there was as you can see from the pics I have included, but even those were few and far between. The clues were there because as well as the aerial photo’s, I also found some Roman pottery, specifically broken parts of Amphora (Fig.1), the containers Roman’s used for transporting goods such as wine and oil.

This got me asking questions and I wanted to find out more, how could a site like this produce nothing Roman, unless like the Purwell Roman site it had been hawked and cleaned out over the years. So where to start? I figured the best place would be the photo which I found online that shows the outline of the villa complex itself. If I could find out the date the photo was taken then I could use that as the base of a possible timeline from when this site was publicly known about and subsequently detected on.

The photo was attributed to The Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography (CUCAP), so I contacted them to see if I could find out anymore information. Professor Tom Spencer was kind enough to reply and supply me with the information I needed. It turns out that this particular photo was taken on 7th May 1976 (click the link above to view), but there were two other photos of this site which I enquired about and they had been taken in 1971 and 1972 respectively also showing the villa outline.

Another interesting feature to note is the shoe-shaped anomaly at the bottom of the photograph that isn’t marked up on the map shown in Fig.2, as it’s not part of the villa complex. It’s most likely the ditch of a completely ploughed-out Neolithic long barrow.

I think it’s a fair assumption that this site would have been an undeniable attraction for budding detecorists right from the very beginning’s of our hobby in the early 1970’s. Such was the growing popularity of detecting back then that towards the end of the decade the ’STOP’ (Stop Taking Our Past) campaign was launched, because there were some in the archaeological community that had their concerns about metal detecting and how historical items were being removed from sites and not being properly recorded.

This is partly because the rules and regulations we have in place today weren’t in place back then. To gain some insight into how the rules of the hobby came in to being as they are today, I had to do a little more research.

Back in 1979 there was the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act which was to consolidate and amend the law relating to ancient monuments to protect the archaeological heritage of England & Wales and Scotland. In 1980 the National Council for Metal Detecting (NCMD) was born providing representation and a forum for responsible detectorists up and down the UK. Then the Treasure Act of 1996 made it a legal obligation for finders of objects which constitute as treasure (as defined in the Act) to report their finds to their local coroner within 14 days. The following year (1997) the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) was founded to record our finds and the rest as they say is history, quite literally!

So potentially this site has been detected on with no recording of finds from at least 1971. Any finds made from 1996 would hopefully be available from when the Portable Antiquities Scheme was set up. Potentially that gave me 26 years’ worth of info on finds that have been made from this site, brilliant, so how do I access all that info? 

It’s at this point I contacted my FLO Matt Fittock who has always been so helpful in answering the many questions I have put to him since starting the hobby again. I asked if there was a way to use the PAS data base to find out what finds had been recorded in a specific area. He said the best way to search the database is to go to the advanced search option, then enter a grid reference under the spatial details section. Because this way of searching is based on a specific grid reference, if anything has been found and recorded within that reference then it will show up. Guess what… nothing came up!

I was dumbfounded, not one single record, Roman or otherwise is listed on the PAS data base as coming from this site. To give you an idea of the scale of this, I overlayed the km2 reference in yellow on the map of the villa site as shown in Fig.2 which was kindly provided by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews at North Herts Museums. How is it possible that no finds have been recorded if this site has been “detected to death”?

This really left me scratching my head, what am I missing? Perhaps this site isn’t a Roman villa after all? This lead me to asking more questions, the main one being what is actually known about this site? Once again this meant contacting Keith at North Herts Museums to see if he could give any insight into what this site could actually have been.

Keith was yet again very kind and generous with his replies to my questions, the first one being…

What evidence is there that this is a Roman Villa?

The evidence that it’s Roman comes from the morphology of the site. These large rectangular enclosures, often with a ditched road leading into them, are typical of Roman villas in the northwestern provinces. Although nothing proving a Roman date has been found on the site, the layout, and the fact that a ditched road that comes through Bygrave and heads for the Ashwell area passes alongside the eastern edge of the enclosure and has a junction into its southern side strongly point to its date.

What archaeological surveys have so far taken place on this site?

No archaeological work has taken place on the ground. As the site isn’t Scheduled, it may have been detected on quite legally many times before the PAS was set up, so we’ll never know if anything was found there before 1996.

What type of villa would it have been?

Given that the aerial photographs don’t show anything that’s definitely identifiable as wall foundations, it’s impossible to speculate on the form of the villa building. The lack of stone foundations may mean that it was a relatively modest timber-framed affair (although timber-framed houses can be large and impressive). It may also be the case that they simply have never shown well enough to enable a plan to be deduced.

My feeling is that it’s a successor to Arbury Banks. There is good evidence of Late Iron Age occupation there and although some Roman material has been found there, the site seems no longer to have been domestic after the conquest (indeed, it had been going into decline from the start of the first century BC, as Baldock developed as a town).

Who would have lived in a villa of this size?

As a place that was once the seat of a local warlord (or similar), the descendants will have formed one of the allied families in the developing kingdoms in southeast Britain. After the conquest, in which the local aristocrats were effectively collaborators with the new regime, they would have wanted to express their wealth in a more Roman way, so like lots of others, they had a new villa built to impress their peers and tenants.

So with all this information, surely there should be Roman coins and artefacts to find here and at the very least there should be finds recorded on the PAS database, but there is nothing on both counts. So where have all the finds gone?

There is a theory that the villa was never actually built, that the foundations were laid but that’s as far as it went. If the site was never occupied then that would certainly explain the lack of finds. The only problem with this theory is that the aerial photographs clearly show the evolution of the site from a smaller rectangular enclosure to the much larger one. Plus there are the fragments of Roman amphora that I found, you don’t find too many of those away from high status habitation.

As a side note, there is also another theory that Arbury Banks is the site of “The Battle of Watling Street” where Boudica was famously defeated by the Romans. If such a battle had taken place here then surely there would be some scattered military remnants of that fight? Again the lack of finds might suggest the battle took place else where, but it is an interesting theory which you can read about by clicking on the link above.

So where does that leave me with regards to a conclusion? It’s a difficult one because all I can do is guess at the several possibilities. I have no evidence if finds were ever found and taken from this site or indeed if there were any finds ever here in the first place. There is always the possibility that this site has been night-hawked over the years, as unfortunately of course this does happen, but once again I have no evidence.

It just leaves me with the thought that if we as detectorists are out uncovering the past then we have a duty to record the things we uncover which are of significance under the PAS guidelines. I see it as a privilege that we get to help stitch together the rich tapestry of history that lies beneath our feet. If we don’t report our finds then that’s when the tapestry misses a few stitches and ultimately becomes a little less rich.

Our time on this permission has come to an end due to the field having now been seeded. However, rather fittingly on the last day there, what should pop up? You guessed it, a Roman coin. Also rather fittingly it was found by my friend whose permission it was. The coin in question, a dupondius of Claudius and is actually a copy, produced during a time of coin shortage in Britain and circulated until at least the start of the third century.

It amazes me that this will be the first ever Roman coin to be recorded from this site on the Portable Antiquities Scheme. In fact it will be the first of any finds to be recorded from this site, and about time too!

Jeton back to the past

It’s been a long time coming, but I have finally had this Jeton I found way back in June 2021 identified. Well sort of, it turns out that there is ’no parallel for this particular Jetton’ according to my local FLO. But he did say that it probably dated to the period c. AD 1418-1437.

Doing a little research I have found that Jetons were commonly used as an alternative to currency. Their main use was as tokens for accountancy which could be stacked up on a lined board to make calculations which worked in a similar way to the abacus. Jetons were usually made of copper alloy as is the one I found, which is why it has this lovely green patina.

In relation to the early French Jetons, Bert Van Beek wrote “Shortly after the introduction of Jetons at the Royal Court, the French high nobility adopted the use of counters for calculating; a bit later the cities and public institutions did so too. At the end of the 13th century their use even occurred in the Southern Netherlands; accordingly, early French Jetons are quite important because they have been the example for all the Dutch counters”.

So with the comment from FLO that this particular Jeton has ‘no parallel’ and Bert Van Beek’s summation that the early French Jetons are quite important, it does make my first Jeton feel that little bit special. That and the fact that it’s in pretty good condition, not bad for a token that’s nearly 600 years old. And again, what was it doing in the middle of a field in Hertfordshire? To throw a joke at it in a very Lance Stater kind of way “There must have been a French accountancy firm here at some point!”.

But all jokes aside, there are connections to be made. A while ago I wrote a blog post about lead bag seals, in particular one bag seal that related to the French town of Castres that could be precisely dated to 1667. This I’m sure was proof that Hitchin at that time was trading with France, most likely in textiles as Hitchin famously built it’s wealth on the wool trade and the town of Castres was known for exporting textiles in that period. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to surmise that this 15th Century French Jeton is evidence that this trade link extended back to the 15th Century and possibly even further. Were French traders crossing the Channel with their accountants in tow to make sure that all transaction’s were being properly calculated and free from the opportunistic dodgy dealings of the English?

Who could ever be sure, but this is what is so great about the hobby I love, I have found some tantalising little bits of evidence that trade must have been taking place with France in this small field on the outskirts of Hitchin. In my opinion metal detecting has an important part to play in uncovering the rich and varied past of this island we call home. It also presents me with the opportunity to play detective and try to find out things about my home town that this hobby is enabling me to do. Now then, where did that Celtic Nobleman loose his purse of gold staters for me to find?!?

Can’t stop treasure hunting

So as my love for this wonderful hobby grows, so does my contributions to Treasure Hunting magazine. This is now my third outing in my favourite mag, but this time it feels that bit more special as I have made it onto the contents page!

To have written an article which the guy’s at Treasure Hunting think would interest their readers just feels bloody brilliant. To share these experiences that I have had whilst detecting for a relatively short time is also a great record for me to keep. This is the main reason behind the Hertfordshire History Hunter blog which I write. It’s a great way for me to map my detecting journey as it continues to unfold and if other people enjoy reading it too then it makes it even more worth while.

As I said in the article there will hopefully be other opportunities to do more surveys for the museum this year and with any luck uncover more of the fabulous history which surrounds my home town. As ever, I will keep updating the blog and the Hertfordshire History Hunter instagram account with all the finds and experiences I encounter along the way. Let’s hope 2022 is a great detecting year for everyone who loves this amazing hobby!

Treasure hunting again…

So here I go again, I now have my second article printed in the January 2022 edition of Treasure Hunting Magazine. This time I have two pages dedicated to my ramblings so things are definitely on the up. This time it’s all about my experience of doing a detector survey for my local museum which is titled ‘A walk in the fields’. This is actually an edited version of my blog which has the same title, so if you are unable to obtain a copy of the magazine you can read it HERE.

As it turns out this will be the first of two articles dedicated to my experience’s of doing detector survey’s for my local museum. The second article is also an edited version of one of my blogs, this time it’s ‘Another walk in the fields’, which will appear in a future edition of Treasure hunting Magazine. Again, like the first article, if you can’t obtain a copy of the magazine when it comes out you can read it HERE.

It is, as most detectorists would agree, an amazing feeling to have a hobby or interest that really grabs every inch of your love and enthusiasm. I often wonder where I would be without being able to detect now, as it really has captured my imagination in a big way. This is why on the weekends when I am unable to get out in the fields, that I find myself writing about it. I have never had any inclination to write before I took up this hobby, but for some reason I just can’t seem to help myself.

Finding all this history beneath the land that surrounds us makes me feel that it should be shown and shared. Most of the stuff we find won’t be museum worthy, but it does all have a history. It’s all part of the story that our ancestors left behind and if we don’t show and share then we stop adding to the richness and detail of that story. I for one will carry on showing, sharing and writing about the things that I find and I will do it for a whole host of reasons, but the main one is that I just love doing it!

So for everyone that enjoys this wonderful hobby, keep up the good work. This history of ours grows bigger by the day as we all uncover what is there to be found, long may this story of ours continue!