GRAB your shovels new figures have revealed a record number of buried treasure troves were discovered in Cumbria in 2019. Fortune hunters and metal detectorists made 25 discoveries over the year, data from the British Museum and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport showed. It represented the largest haul since 2012, while a total of 95 finds were reported in Cumbria over that eight-year period. Jane Laskey, the manager at the Senhouse Roman Museum in Maryport, believed the finds helped to show the centuries of history in Cumbria. She said: “Because of Cumbria’s geography and it’s position in the nation, at one point it was in Scotland and then in England and now part of a united kingdom, which has a huge impact.
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A cheeky Georgian button depicting two people having sex is one of the many fascinating treasures which have emerged from the mud of the Thames.
The piece, which is believed to date back to the 18th-Century, was found by a mudlarker .
The term is given to the people who comb the 100-mile foreshore of the Thames and pick up objects and artefacts revealed in the mud by the twice daily changing tides.
Anna Borzello, 54, found the erotic miniature button, which is small enough it sits on a fingertip, earlier this year as she was walking along the river. I like the idea of someone having this really raunchy pin tucked underneath their collar that they would maybe flap up, she said.
A golden king rises from the mud of a lonely field, where he had lain undisturbed for the best part of 400 years.
In his left hand he holds a shimmering orb, in the other an equally lustrous royal sceptre. At his feet crouches a white antelope, the king’s personal heraldic beast.
His Majesty’s sudden appearance is altogether astonishing.
Kevin Duckett cannot hope to surpass his discovery of what is thought to be an exquisite fragment of the lost crown of the Tudor dynasty, which had once adorned the head of Henry VIII
This is not an Arthurian myth or a tale of English folklore but the extraordinary story of what could be one of the greatest archaeological finds in Britain.
Doubts Cast on the Chinese Coins
In 2018, the Portable Antiquities Scheme described the worn coin from Cheshire as a cast copper alloy piece minted during the Xining reign (1068 -1077 AD.) They declared “It is doubtful that this is a genuine medieval find (i.e. present in the country due to trade and lost accidentally) but more likely a more recent loss from an [sic] curated collection.” But Dr. Green worries the ‘loss from a curated collection’ explanation for unusual discoveries is overused, writing,
“although the possibility of a loss from a curated collection certainly cannot be discounted, it can be perhaps overused as an explanation for surprising finds as
1.75in-tall figure dates back to the 7th Century but remains in fantastic condition
Experts believe it is a gaming piece similar to chess that formed part of a set
It was bought by a private collector for £120k with Timeline Auctions of Mayfair
A 1,400-year-old bronze chess piece that was unearthed in a field in Norfolk has sold for more than £120,000 at an auction.
The 1.75in-tall item, which depicts an armed horse rider, was discovered by an anonymous metal detectorist near Bradwell in Great Yarmouth.
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Experts believe the carving, which shows a mounted soldier with centre-parted bobbed hair, large pellet eyes and a moustache, dates all the way back to the 7th Century – making it a relic of Anglo-Saxon Britain.