Monday, 7 August 2017

Even more details on Old Buckenham finds

Information from the secretary
Godfrey Pratt, secretary of the Norfolk Heritage Recovery Group (NHRC) has provided more details on the finds.
In the end there were 52 club members detecting, plus a special guest Wendy Howard who is the Anglian Secretary for the National Council for Metal Detecting (NCMD). Wendy commented very favourably on the organisation of the day's event, the quality of the finds, and the quality of Steve Milner's lunchtime burgers.
There were very many finds, which covered a timespan from Neolithic (a flint cutting blade), through Roman (three Roman broches and a coin), medieval, and many coins right up to a modern 20p piece. Of the coins, there were a dozen medieval silver pennies from the 12th and 13th centuries, and two very impressive Charles 1 shillings from the mid 1600s. 



Godfrey's personal best find was a Queen Anne silver sixpence (approximately 1705) which had been bent to form what is known as a Love Token: reputedly this was the origin of the nursery rhyme about the crooked man finding a crooked sixpence by a crooked stile.
During the afternoon Christine Arksey, whose husband used to farm the land brought along a Celtic bronze bracelet  which her husband found about thirty years ago on the same field as the one being detecting on now. This is quite an important and rare find, in excellent condition, and she very kindly agreed that it could be taken it on next monthly visit to the Finds Liaison Officer at the County Archaeologist's Office at Gressenhall where it will be accurately described, photographed and added to the national database at www.finds.gov.uk 



Very great thanks and appreciation are due to Tom Barron, without whose generous loan of two of his fields the event could not have taken place. As a result of the dig, NHRG will be writing out a cheque for £500 to the Raise The Roof appeal. If anyone else would like to help raise another £500 by offering some land for a day, please contact Godfrey Pratt (NHRG Treasurer) at godfrey.pratt@mail.com

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