Lost Treasures ?

             A detectorist came calling last week.  Knowing the age of our woodland area and that it as a long history of occupation with records going back into the 15th century, we have always been interested in getting a specialist involved or at worst hiring the detecting equipment and doing it ourselves. After a chance on-line encounter we recently met a very keen and experienced treasure-seeker and invited him over to have an initial look at Crow Wood. We have avoided thinking of finding a Saxon hoard or actually anything valuable or rare; that would be very unlikely but we decided at the start that whatever he did find would add a little to the wood's story and we would value. 

           This initial brief survey threw up the usual suspects - several odd bits of unidentifiable metal, the copper bases of several shotgun cartridges, metal tarpaulin rings and several ring-pulls. However, there were two rather interesting finds in amongst this motley trove - a small lozenge shaped object which turned out to be a cigarette lighter, likely French or German made and dating from 1910 to 1920. The second object was like a shotgun cartridge in size and shape. Made of brass or copper it appeared packed with lead shot at one end. It had us all guessing at the time of finding; later research by our expert showed that it was probably the end of a lead shot carrier, an 18th Century pouch that would be used to hold and then load pellets into a hunter's gun after the charge was introduced. The pouch part made of leather would have rotted away a long time ago. Someone would have been very cross to have lost it all those years ago. 

          Who knows what will turn up on future visits !

some of the initial findings

the two finds that had us guessing

loaded with lead shot at one end (lead oxidises to white)

detecting is certainly hard on the knees

turning over the soil in response to another signal....what might it be?

This turned out to be a small, rather delicate old lighter

our local Buzzard watching over proceedings from the top of Big Red