Finding a hoard – Brenda’s story
This is the story in her own words of how Brenda Orme stumbled upon a small hoard of Northumbrian base metal stycas on 18 August 2018. It’s not often that I can say I was on the same outing but I was there on this day. However, I was in a different area so I missed the chance of unearthing a styca. None have previously been found on the field they came off, nor in any others in the locality. Therefore, they count as really good finds. Here is Brenda’s story.
Brenda’s story
“I started out with an Equinox on a massive stubble field, which was hard going. The machine was working okay but I had difficulty understanding the signals. After a while I changed to my Deus, which is easier to understand. I then got my proper detecting head on.
I stood on the high point of the field and surveyed the area. Where would finds be most likely to be? Water would be important so I headed down a steep slope at the bottom of the field where I could see a beck. When I started to detect the soil was softer and there was less stubble. Then, hey presto, my first styca! I looked around but there was no-one in sight. I retraced my steps up the slope, found Terry and we headed back down. Pretty soon we were joined by Jack, Jeff and Andrew.
I ended up with nine stycas and they were reported to our local FLO, together with the others that had been found. They have now being disclaimed as Treasure and will be returned to the finders
I would like to thank Jeff for organising the outing and thanks also to my Deus for helping me to find nine really interesting coins.”
Missing out on the find
I said at the beginning that I was present during the outing when Brenda found the stycas. The first field really was huge. However, detecting wasn’t easy as the stubble was mostly long and tough and my search head kept banging into large stones. I did venture down to the bottom of the field, where there was a steep slope down to a much smaller field. If I go down there, I thought, I’ll have to struggle back up again. Therefore, I kept to the big field and in doing so I missed the possibility of unearthing a Northumbrian styca. Still, it could have been worse – if Brenda and the others had all ended up with hammered gold coins in their finds’ bags.