DetectingWales.com

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Diary of finding a hoard


Find gold hoard, ring coroner and finds liaison officer.

Finds liaison officer Kurt Adams, asks me how do I know it’s Bronze Age gold . Duh!

Tells me he will come and pick it up in two days.

Kurt Adams never arrives.

Phone him up, ‘where are you’, ‘sorry couldn’t make it, next week sometime.’

Next week arrives, no sign of him.

Third week, I ask him are you taking this seriously, he says sorry I’ve got car troubles, and Gloucester museum hasn’t got the adequate insurance, so you can’t send it there.

Forth week , get ****** off, take it myself to the Corrinium Museum , Cirencester.

First thing they say, we don’t know anything about this, why didn’t Kurt Adams inform us. (why didn’t he indeed)

Fifth, sixth, seventh and finally eighth week archies turn up, to look at the site, even though some of the gold was found on the surface..

Discuss find with landowner, but not me.

Silence!

After 14 weeks eventually turn up excavate the rest after securing funding from the heritage lottery fund of £20000, that was just the dig. :o

Plan to excavate trench 3m x 10m.

Jan Wills turns up, head of Archaeology in Gloucestershire. Refuses to speak to me. B---h!

Start to excavate trench, find first piece of gold. Yippee!

Tell me they have 10 days to complete job.

Thursday weather forecast not looking good, forecast rain, I offer to get large sheet to cover trench, no it will be alright they say.

Friday, turn up to swimming pool in field. Archies abandon dig until Monday.

Archies arrive on Monday morning, to find weather has dropped to minus 10 overnight. Trench is completely frozen , so they chisel the lumps of ice out. I manage to detect spoil heap, and find large piece of gold lying on top, visible to everyone.
Tuesday, carry on digging. One of the diggers stands up to stretch his back, and I look down to find he has uncovered a gold ring which was clearly visible 10 feet away but he fails to see it, until I point it out to him. 

Lots of secret phone calls are made, just out of range.

Eighteen pieces are finally recovered from the trench on the rescue dig, I find 12 the archies find 6.

Trench finally refilled, and archies leave.

6 months later, I ask them whether I can write to the local paper to tell my story.

No problem, as long as we see it first, and vet it.

Send Email to Shire Hall , get reply from Kurt Adams FLO, story O.K but you didn’t mention all the hard work the F.L.O did for you. I must have been like ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and slept for 3 months and missed something!

Revise the story, then go to the local  press to tell them the facts, 10 minutes latter my mobile rings , all hell breaks loose, it’s Shire Hall, stop the story, fund raiser need to be contacted, too late I say!, then the phone goes dead. What the f--k was all that about!

Read papers the next day, make front page!

Archies then contact landowner, and fax him the press article and cause a rift between us, they then try and get him to make me sign a gagging order. Every thing must go through Shire Hall and the archies.

 Bollocks I say.

18 months go by, not a word from the archies.

Asked to attend court, for treasure inquest. Declared treasure.

Finally get a letter saying a provisional valuation has valued my hoard at between £15,000-£17,000, which I say is too low.

T.V.C meet and value my hoard at £17000, which I contest twice.

On the 30th June they meet again. They ignore all my evidence I have  provided them on the value of the ring money, and tell me Bronze Age gold is fairly common, and say they  will pay 3 times scrap value for the cut up pieces, at the time gold was trading at $500 an ounce. 

After 2 years we finally have to except £17000, although I tell them not to use this as a bench mark for any other future cases, as we feel we were ripped off.

Four year then go by and I’m not allowed back on the land, because they tell the landowner they may need to scan the ground some time in the future.

Finally the landowner relents and let me continue to search his land.

Stalked on various Detecting forums by Tim Grubb of Gloucestershire archaeology under the name of 'Gooner.,
Write to Shire Hall under the freedom of Information Act, and receive a large folder containing libellous emails, and 100's of pages copied from various Detecting forums, infringing the copyright of these sites.

Contact Solicitor, to sue Shire Hall for libel and invasion of privacy, and told it will be very costly and no legal aid is available.

 Write to Trevor Austin of the NCMD to see whether he can help me, as I was a paid  up member. Unfortunately the insurance coverage will only help me if I libel someone else, not if they libel me.

Next stage to publish the story in the national press.

shocking , and these are the so called experts  :D :D :D

good read ,and as i stated last week if i find a hoard {or maybe i have ;)} best thing to do is cover it up again and forget about it ,,,way to much hastle.

I may even post a few of the letters up, that will raise a few eyebrows.  :o

Nice story Avalon. makes me so glad that I never find anything! :) , and just enjoy a good day out.

Quite honestly, I wish I had never found mine, for all the grief it has given me over the years, but I feel those involved in the stalking should be sacked.

you must have the patience of a saint to of dealt with all the "people in the know " great story anyway ,  :o

What a shocking way to treat someone who has uncovered some important artifacts, and more so the unproffessionalism of certain so called experts that do that for a living. All i can say is that as an enthusiast you have acted 100 times more proffessional then them and i salute your patience!!!!!

And very nice finds that have been rescued from night hawks and can be preserved as part of history.

well done ;D

Thankyou for posting Avalon. As some may know I have always tried to work closely with Archaeologists and with the treatment I have recieved over the last 12 months I will do exactly the same as you Paul ( NFL ). We work within the same FLO who I shall happily record finds with but that is where my association will end. Over the last 10 years I have recorded a lot of new sites with the SMR and happily passed on Info. As it now stands, Trust is Nil and yes that buzz of discovery and the chance to help rewrite my local history is for the select few. It is not an uncommon Practice,You have all been warned.  :o

yep i know the feeling well ,,after a few years on passing finds to the flo i know find that they arnt being recorded properly on the pas site or in some cases not being recorded at all ,,then i get the objects back and i wonder if it was for just the flo to look at  ???...im not talking victorian doorknobs or georgian grots but the last lot was 13 assorted hammered coins,,,i,ll keep on finding em for my enjoyment i think ;)

Well I can guarantee there isn’t anything left but that doesn’t stop the Nighthawks. Paul the vexatious blogger with incredibly itchy underpants ran a competition to find the spot after giving  all the clues out on his blog. Two local nighthawks guessed the spot and he congratulated them on their intelligence. Three months later the gamekeeper caught them on the site and turfed them off. I passed on the info to the police who gave me an incident number as I know the two involved, and as far as I know they are still detecting.  I threaten the vexatious blogger with incredibly itchy underpants   in  aiding and abeting a crime by assisting in the commission of a crime involving robbery.
I have all his blog saved on file if the police would like to investigate the case and hopefully deport him for trial.

Very interesting Avlon. Just to let you all know, several (20 +) persons working at Shire Hall have been given their marching orders due to council cut-backs.

I would love to know who they are, maybe sticking pins in dolls has worked after all. :) I am not opposed to recording as I have objects on loan to the Corinium Museum and have donated loads over the years, but I feel we have been given the shitty end of the stick, by people who are clearly breaking the law.

i've always wondered how many mueseum peices fall into the hands of dis-honest corrupt curators :-\

Partly why I feel as I do Nobby. Some Archaeologists have some stunning collections and I have seen some stunning stuff. Before I say to much they are not whiter than white. Never have been never will be.

I think it would be wise here, - And I'm sure Avalon would agree, that not all F.L.O's work the same. I know Geoff uses Laura the Somerset F.L.O and she works tirelessly,  My dealings with Mark Lodwick have all been a good experience as well as Peter Reaville (top bloke IMO).

It would nice to think any Archaeologist viewing this post as a guest , will realise to build trust it has to work both ways, otherwise that great divide will just get wider.
They  also need to put their own house in order, rather than  cause distrust amongst those that do record.

well said steve,and as a archi undergrad i can safely say i can see both sides of the fence :D,,,if im qualified when you find your next hoard give me a bell  ;) ;D

As Taff has said I have had a great relationship not only with Laura and her predecessor Anna as FLO's but also the county Archaeologist.
It saddens me when I hear of the trouble that some people have but as in all professions and walks of life, sometimes things go pear shaped. :-\

It would be interesting to find out whether out of the 1800 pieces of gold found in the Staffordshire hoard, were the damaged and cut up pieces of gold, valued at just 3 times scrape value, or do they move the goal posts to suit themselves.  ???

i just think they blindfold themselves and stick pins in a numbers chart ;D

Yes I believe from the award breakdown I read, the scrap gold was only priced as such and so it should be. Gold is as old as the earth and is not made by someone only shaped. Therefore if it has been cut into unidentifiable pieces how do you value it above a new wedding ring?

some of you may remember that last year i found 2 seperate pieces {in the same spot}of a 15thc gold ring{crosses on it,clasped hands etc} i filled out treasure forms for said pieces ,,earlier this year i found 2 more pieces of said ring{same place} only to be told the first pieces were disclaimed even though they had photographs of which i sent of the 2 latter pieces ,,yey i still had to fill out treasure form for second set ,,,,what a waste of time ,,,,beurocracy gone MAD.

That would then mean any precious metal objects we detect over 300 years old that are just fragments, should not be deemed treasure, so should not be handed in under the Treasure Act. Any object of gold or silver which has been fashioned in some way, other than it’s crude form is and important object because of what it can tell us, not consigned to the scrap bucket.

when i found a tudor silver bodkin which was disclaimed i gave it the farmer ,,,next time i find  ???treasure ???,,my finds box is going to be treasuring it  ;D

Well there is some weight to that argument but how would you then value it by; age of scrap? pretty scrap? scrap without scratches? You have to draw a line somewhere and just because it was yours doesn't make it more valuable.

A £20 note is just a scrap of paper with ink on it, but it is worth more than just a scrap of paper. :)

Ahhh but it's what that ink has written that's important.

The ink is just a written promise to pay the bearer the value of the note, where gold is a tangible asset  when currency falls back on hard times. The gold you see now will always be with us, the notes may last 6 months if your lucky.
The value off the Bronze Age hoard is in the history it represents and what it tells us about ourselves, not in the actual  bullion weight. If it was proved to be Welsh gold it would be worth 6 times the price of South African gold.
What price should be put on art?

Exactly, it's academic value is priceless but how do you you put a price on it? Your getting on morally dodgy ground when you start charging for it.
Much of the bronze age gold comes from Ireland but even if Welsh, it's price would only be high if you intended melting it down and making jewellery out of it.
Sorry Steve I'm playing Devils advocate here slightly but their has to be a system of pricing however unfair it may seam. If you were to find a fragment of a Double Leopard, it's price would be negligible in comparison to the whole coin and it's the same with Bronze age gold, an unidentifiable piece of gold is just that.