We set off in glorious sunshine for another rally over the bridge in the sleepy area of Highbridge. As is the norm on Detecting Wales rallies, Helios was contacted and scorching hot sunshine had been secured for the day. They say the sun only shine on the righteous, so how we can arrange this everytime I will never know.
Following the usual pay up, sign up, go there, go here, heres the history, we were off! Lots of pastured fields, which I don't think had been ploughed for a good number of years. The site was in the shadow of the Celtic and Roman Hill Fort of Brent Knoll though, plus we had Roman occupation very near the farm, so expectations were quite high
First find of the day I saw was Terry with bizzarely a New Zealand two dollar coin - what that was doing in a field in Highbridge is anyones guess. I'm sure turning over the turf and seeing a gold coin shining at him was a fair old shock, thankfully Terry recovered though.
We next saw a few Vicky pennies and half pennies, a Georgian copper and a nice cartwheel penny.
Next find of note was a silver sixpence to Jeff Stock that I forgot to get a photo of . I soon joined the silver club, with only my second ever florin - dated 1933 - so a 50/50 silver content. I was happy all the same as it just about ticks a silver box for June.
Buckles were the order of the day - with a lovely one from Tyna, another from The Doc along with a nice looking trade weight
There was also a bit of a theme with silver coated lead - sounds odd? Well it was. Dennis had a silver plated lead mount, Debbie had a silver plated badge/mount of some kind and I also had a silver plated lead whatsit at the end. Sounds to me like the farm workers were skint, but wanted to give the appearance of silver items, so bought lead with silver plate.
Onto the real silver in the shape of a corking silver spoon found by one of our Newbies - sorry I forget your name. Lovely looking spoon and George III at a guess - I'll get the Hallmarks book out later.
Find Of The Day in my book!
Another newbie (I think called Roy) had a lovely old bronze item - that I have seen before, but for the life of me can't remember where. Someone suggested off a money pouch - I'm sure someone here will know.
Malcom.mmts had a hoard of spindle whorls found pretty close together - I think it was 8 in total. I personally think its whats left over from a loom that has been burnt or thrown out. Nice find though.
Someone had a complete horses bit and we joked about him using it on the wife to keep her quiet - I know mine would find a way around it though!
Another decent find was a larger copper token in lovely condition which should clean up nicely.
The day was coming to a close, and I saw Ancient Pat at the end taking a well earned rest, but even he couldn't work his hammered magic on this rally! So where were the hammered coins I hear you asking? Oh, they were there, believe you me, just too deep for us. We can't have a Silver Fest every time, but we thought with it being less than a mile from the Rooksbridge one we would have a few. Oh, well next Rally hopefully, and we'll even guarantee the sun again!
Thanks for joining us, I hope you all had a good day out.
Cheers
Neil
P.S. I have just had a shower and it looks like I am modelling a white vest - my arms, neck and calfs however are red as hell! And to think I never burn - my cars outside temperature gauge reached 79 degrees farenheit at one point today!