Back in December, my detecting pal Terry and I decided to visit one of the local farms we have permission to detect on but where neither of us had ventured before. It was a very misty morning with the sun glinting through in parts and quite eerie!
The field was quite roughly ploughed and damp and made for heavy going – but all good exercise and muscle toning work………
The field was very quiet and there were hardly any signals at all from our detectors – in fact it was a good half an hour before I heard a nice clear beep from my machine. On digging this signal I found a small heavily -encrusted coin with a strange crescent shape on one side and what could (with a bit of imagination) be a profile of a head. That along with one other signal which was a lump of lead totalled my finds for the whole day and Terry fared no better.
After carefully cleaning this small wonderful coin emerged but I was none the wiser as to what it could be.
The lettering on one side read as “DE LVNDONIA” so I started to search on the Intranet for this phrase. I soon saw that this meant it was from London – then I spotted a link to the Portable Antiquities database for a coin with this lettering – PAS reference ESS-F6FC74.
The description and images on here looked identical to my find but also said that this was “An important and unusual find ”
The following morning I emailed Caroline McDonald my Finds Liaison Officer with images of the coin who confirmed it was the same type of coin – and that this was only the second to have been found in Essex. In total only four examples are known.
However when Caroline showed the coin images to the experts in early Medieval coins at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, they were concerned that this might be a copy as they could see what they believed to be a faint casting seam on the edges of the coin. I therefore arranged to take the coin in person to let them see it in the flesh to clarify whether it was a contemporary copy or the real thing. It emerged that what they thought was the casting seam was in fact my cleaning – although I had removed the encrustation from the faces of the coin I had not cleaned the edges very well……….
During this time I had contacted the landowner to let him know about the coin and its rarity and that Colchester Castle Museum were interested in acquiring it for their collection.
This week the coin has gone on display at the museum along with the first coin found by another detectorist in 2004. Colchester Castle Museum have issued a press release about the coins which can be seen here:
http://www.colchester.gov.uk/news_det.asp?art_id=2945&sec_id=27
The local newspapers have picked up on this and articles have appeared showing the coins along with my comments as follows:
Corinne Mills said: “When I found this coin it was a real puzzle trying to identify it. It was not in any of the books I had so I resorted to searching the internet where I found an exact match on the Portable Antiquities Scheme database – and the record told me it was a rare and very interesting coin! That was very exciting and started me on a journey ending up with visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to allow the experts to inspect the coin and confirm exactly what it was. It is part of our local history and being in Colchester Castle Museum means it can be shared with all of us.”
Now I just need to POP along to the Museum to see it for myself – I am thrilled to have been able to share this discovery in this way.
