Living in Llantwit Major and fishing the beach for the last 32 years has given me plenty of time to study the beach, when i took up metal detecting ten years ago my first port of call was going to be Llantwit beach, i purchased the Minelab Sovereign especially for this, but i still have not detected the beach, probably due to my hatred of masses of people, or the fact that i cannot get any enthusiasm to get up early and detect the beaches when the hoard of zombies are still in bed. I have researched the beach and my findings are quite interesting.
Don't bother detecting up close to the car park unless the surface has been dragged away as this area is full of shredded tins ( as Rob stated earlier) there are rings and goodies to be had here but you have to wait for the right conditions, the other side with the sand is much the same, to the right the clay is close to the surface so could be worth persevering. I have seen a detectorist take coins and jewellery from these areas about 12 years ago, this was after the diggers had scraped and levelled the area.
But the best place for detecting would be out on the front towards the low tide mark where the two big pools are as this is where most of the shipwrecks broke up, there is a thin layer of pebbles on top of clay so the finds will be close to the surface. I saw a detectorist out on the front of the beach about 20 years ago, he was down by the low tide mark between the pools, i watched him for a while and waited for him to make his way back to the car park, when i approached him i told him that i was interested in metal detecting and asked him if he had found anything of interest, he replied just the usual stuff and a few coins, he pulled out a handfull of coins and i noticed a thin dark coin which at the time meant nothing to me, but i now know was probably a shilling of Charles Ist or James the Ist, but the best find was a full Sovereign of Victoria which he pulled from his pocket, which was in
excellent condition, and he had found it in one of the big pools.
The harbour that Rob mentions did exist but is further out on the beach, the Roman part has still got the dressed stone in a broken line, i found this a good few years ago when i was crabbing, this is over to the left of the car park, the medieval part has the posts still visible out on the front of the beach, this is called the Black Boys as the posts are still visible sticking out of the rocks and they are black with age.
The two pools on the front are interesting as the right hand side pool turned up a huge medieval anchor about 27 years ago which took a group of men two weeks to get it to the car park where it remained for a number of years before dissapearing.
You also have the fact that half the Iron age hill fort up on the cliff has erroded into the sea leaving Iron Age and Roman finds waiting to be found, this is over to the left.
I must add that you need a permit to detect on Llantwit Major beach which costs £10
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