It is with profound sadness that I have to inform you all of the passing of a true stalwart of our great hobby.

Besides being a proud mother and grandmother to Amanda, David, Jenny and their children, Sue, along with her late husband Trevor, was amongst the founding members and defenders of organised metal detecting in the United Kingdom.

Between them, they made formidable advocates for the protection and advancement of our hobby, whether it was at their club at Bolsover, within the Yorkshire region, at formal meetings with members of the House of Lords, MPs’ and Government officials or at meetings with Clubs and National Organisations in Europe.

Sue was always the quiet power behind the throne, encouraging and supporting Trevor in his work as National Secretary by taking on the role of Assistant General Secretary and also supporting him whilst he was a member of the Treasure Valuation Committee.

In later years she continued her advocacy for our hobby at all levels as a member of the Associated Regions for Metal Detecting (ARMD) and also the Association for Metal Detecting Sport (AMDS)

Away from metal detecting Sue loved to spend time with her family and friends, be it wine tasting in Tenby, a quiet game of 10 pin bowling or just some quiet time with her family.

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Coin

The reverse of the coin has a Lion and Sun, or Shir-o-khorshid. This is one of the better-known emblems of Iran and was an element on the flag until the revolution in 1979. It first appeared in 12th century coinage.

There have been many coins from Iran that have this symbol within a crowned wreath such as this 1/4 Rial.

The obverse would normally show the value of the coin but in Stephen’s find this has been worn smooth and inscribed.

Inscription

Around the edge the inscription reads: 8390 SMITH * NORFOLK REGT. In the centre in three line is 1914, BAGHDAD, 1917.

Private C Smith

With the help of a friend, Stephen managed to trace 8390 SMITH of the Norfolk Regiment thanks to an award for bravery. The award notes that Private Smith was injured and Stephen has managed to obtain a hospital record for him.

The thinking is that Private Smith either made this himself or had someone make him this memento of time in Baghdad while he was there and then he lost it when he returned home, probably somewhere near where he lived. Stephen say “Perhaps there are people reading this who have done a family tree from over the years and think there might be a connection. Smith is a common name but hopefully someone has a link – it will be very interesting to find out“

If you can help Stephen, leave a comment, contact me or email Stephen at tkjoll@aol.com

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Should I or Shouldn’t I

So to take you back to Saturday the 13/11/21, and my conundrum being Sunday tomorrow do I stay home and crack on with to pre-Christmas decorating or go to a club dig. Undecided at bedtime I laid my detecting gear alongside my painting gear at the side of the bed, and decided to leave it up to the elements; if it’s chucking down, I stay at home and crack on with the painting. If it’s not raining I’m gone.

7.15 am alarm rang out and poking my head through the curtains showed a damp misty morning, but not raining… passing and giving the wife a peck on her head I was off before she could grumble disapproval at my decision, a quick bypass to the kitchen for lunch supplies and into the outhouse for my gear.

Meeting up with my club

Arriving at the set meeting place and pre-dig Instructions were given. Also, a club member was presented with a new machine on behalf of the club for all her contributions to charity this year. It was a heart tugging moment to see her face light up, garret 300 to new vanquish; very well deserved in my opinion.

So part of the clubs annual diary is to observe the two minutes silence at 11am, this is done around the pop-up flagpole in whichever field we are on. Not wanting to wander to far from the flagpole, I stayed reasonably close to save a walk back at 10.50.

The find

It was at 10.15 when I had a muddled but good solid signal; a tinge of iron was present but I wasn’t sure. Just to mention, I’m using the Nox 800 field 1 factory set 5 tones apart from my recovery is down to 4. The signal was a one sided 18, I hadn’t bent my knees for a while so I thought to hell with it, have a rest and dig it.

My first sight of this find was a yellow crescent I immediately thought “a newish shotty shell”. How wrong was I…. The next thirty minutes are a blur really, brain overload whatever you want to call it. I’m only thankful of a club member had seen the commotion and filmed it on his phone as he approached. I do remember him asking me to repeat the gold Dance for the camera….. painting pfffft…. boy I made the right decision.

Anyway hope you enjoyed my account of November 14th, Remembrance day this year 2021. A day that will never leave me or be hard to beat.

Reported to the FLO

My find is now safely in the hands of the FLO. I look forward to its final report, which I’m hoping will be available in the next few weeks; I will provide an update to the story, when it’s available. My curiosity is the writing on the inside of the ring and possibly it’s significance to it’s history. No doubt the PAS report will reveal all; let’s hope “made in China” in old English isn’t highlighted… lol

I do know its a Iconographic finger ring probably medieval depicting three saints St Barbara, St Margaret, St Peter.

Thanks to Dunelme Metal Detecting Club

I also feel that some recognition is deserved to my metal detecting club, Dunelme Metal Detecting Club (DMDC), its Chairman Roy Glaholm and Committee for all the hard work that goes behind the scenes, for days like these would never happen and finds of a lifetime would never be made. I have included a picture of the members who were there on the day as we observed the two minute silence just 45 minutes after the ring was found. Why I wasn’t still bouncing around the field is beyond me.

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Finding the hoard – Part 1

Late last October, I was detecting a permission off the A30 overlooking our Devon village. The route follows, broadly, a physical ridge taking trade and tourism to southerly Exeter and to Cornwall beyond. 

Not hopeful

In approaching the afternoon, I was less than optimistic. The stout stalks of wheat stubble were still fresh and unbending and although I had turned up this small Bronze Age axe head near the entrance to the field some eighteen months ago, a couple of later visits had suggested that the area was at best “quiet”.

Hopefulness was further reduced as the field is overlooked by a radio mast with emissions from which my normally reliable Equinox 800 has difficulty coping. Preferring to search in “multi-frequency”, here I was limited to 40 Khz – the only bandwidth which could deal with the electro-magnetic chatter.

A clear signal

Ten minutes in, I dug a clear signal with a TID of 15. It was a heavy early Roman bronze – a Dupondius or Sestertius – and I logged the find spot with a ten-figure grid reference, my usual practice for anything emerging of likely historic interest.

Minutes later, three more similar came out and moments later a couple of fragments which, but for the context of the full coins, might easily have been overlooked as scrap. Those positions were also logged. By close of play, a total of twelve had turned up in an area of some 25 square metres.

Following days, with friends

I resolved to come back for a full session the following day and invited a couple of club friends to help, one of them a Deus user to see if his machine could cope better with the EMI.  It did.

Over three days, thirty coins or recognisable part coins turned up, this time in an expanded area of some fifty square metres, all of a similar age and all of them in very poor condition, with barely a bust or reverse discernible.

No attempt was made to clean them in any way, no rubbing or brushing; I just bagged them up, soil traces and all and declared the finds to Dr Lucy Shipley, our FLO.  She in turn wrote to our District Coroner, reporting the find and asking for permission to retain the present finds, bagged and labelled, pending a re-search of the field in Spring after it had been freshly ploughed.

Finding the hoard – Part 2

Fast forward to May of this year. The farmer-owner of the land had been regularly updated both by the FLO and myself and he phoned one morning to say that the field had been re-ploughed, harrowed and drilled with a fresh crop of maize. I contacted members of our East Devon club and on a chosen Sunday, seven of them with assorted detectors turned up to do battle. 

Organising the search

Familiar with the difficulty of herding cats or detectorists, and wanting something akin to a scientific search pattern, I devised a plan.

I assessed the likely area of scatter and, the evening before the exercise, tested our marriage of fifty three years by asking Patsy, my wife, to join me in laying out seven transepts or lanes with bright yellow pegged cord , each some eight metres by fifty.

These dimensions, I thought, would give a decent detectable area if done in both directions and as slowly as individual style allowed. All seven members were good, proven detectorists.

Magnificent Seven

On the Sunday, the Magnificent Seven drew lots for a transept and agreed that, having searched his lane up and back, would then swap with a colleague with a different machine, who would search the same transept. A coin find was to be announced with a shout and a bright yellow peg put in at the findspot. I did no detecting myself, just co-ordinated the group effort.

After only a few moments of searching, the first shout went up and then they came in thick and fast.

At the end of the morning, and after a good bit of lane-swapping, 29 more coins had been unearthed, bringing the total scatter to 59.

Send up the drone

Our son James drove down for a second time from Derbyshire with his licensed drone because we wanted more aerial views, including the scatter, if we could. In anticipation of his arrival, I had placed more yellow pegs from the October finds, using the October recorded co-ordinates and adding to those of the previous day’s re-search of the site.

The photography proved more difficult than we had at first expected because the height required to give an overview of the field clashed with the visibility of the distributed pegs. Though clearly making an impressive cluster when viewed from ground level, the 59 yellow pegs simply didn’t show up when photographed from 250 feet.

Now we’re cooking

An impromptu solution was found over a lunch-break by raiding Patsy’s baking cupboards and finding 59 grease-proof cake circles, each 9” in diameter. With its yellow peg though the centre of each, these then allowed the drone to capture them with fascinating effect.

Finds

Of the total seven ‘lanes’ covering the estimated area of scatter, Transept 1 produced no finds at all and Transept 7 produced just one. Nor was anything found beyond Transept 7, suggesting that the estimation had been fairly accurate.

Incidental to the coin finds, a number of other potentially interesting items turned up for consideration by the PAS, not least some worked lithics which suggest footfall long before our Romans.

Treasure inquest

The individual coins are now all bagged up with finder reference and transept indicator shown and deposited with the FLO pending Coroner’s inquest.

I have asked the Coroner to list the team of seven as “assisting” in the hoard discovery.

Moral of the story

And the moral of this story…. In experiencing a “quiet” field, it may just be that we’re not listening…
Happy Days!

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Colin said it is 14mm in diameter and he thought it was made of lead. On one side is a face set within a beaded circle and on the other side are vertical and horizontal lines forming a mass of squares.

The face looks as if it could be Anglo-Saxon/Viking. An alternative is that the head could be meant to represent Christ within a halo. The imagery appears to be struck rather than cast. This would entail cutting a die for the side with the head, which would take some time to do.

So, what is this thing? I’ve no idea. Datewise, it might be over a thousand years old but could have been made relatively recently. I’d suggest it is old rather than fairly new, for why would someone want to make something like this over recent years? Plausible suggestions as to the age and identity of this find are welcomed.

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