A story of the treasure seekers

The bad news is that for centuries we have been a nation of losers, writes Ben Bentley.

The good news is that history’s great lost property department is right under our noses, in the fields beneath our feet.

“We are lucky in this country that we have got thousands of years of people dropping things,” smiles metal detector enthusiast Tim Kennett, as his equipment bleeps again during his search for lost possessions in the countryside around south Shropshire.

“It really does bring history to life – you never know what you are going to find next, and it’s the excitement of learning the history of what went on in the area.” 

Tim is secretary of Delacey Searchers, a group of a dozen metal detector enthusiasts who meet once a month at the Cliff Hotel in Ludlow before sweeping the fields of Shropshire with their electronic gadgets.

At his base near Churchstoke, where he runs a shop called Evergreen which sells metal detectors, Tim indicates a table packed with recent finds. They include bronze swords, Roman brooches, lead musket balls (“Imagine one of those coming at you!”), a medieval pot handle, a bronze cow bell and one treasure recovered from more recent history – a metal Manchester United badge.

Each item, and the mystery of how it came to be lost, tells a tale: perhaps Tim’s ornate bronze pin reveals a Roman love story, the piece removed in haste from his, or her, toga in the heat of a moment.

Lost rings – a lover’s tiff? The Manchester United badge – a temporary loss of faculties?

The Delacey Searchers have found all sorts. Not to mention a lost road. Or at least evidence of one.

“Sometimes we research an area beforehand but sometimes we just come across an area where there are things of interest,” Tim explains.

“There must be, somewhere, a Roman Road but people don’t know.”

“We have recently discovered Roman artefacts near Ludlow. I found eight 1st or 2nd Century molten bronze coins which looks like evidence of Romans being there. There’s not been much found like this around Ludlow, it’s very exciting for us.

“We have discovered a lot of history that we did not know about and would never have known about because where we found them is not an archaeological scheduled site.”

Fellow member of the group Ian Roache speculates: “There’s Watling Street at Craven Arms and as far as we know nobody knows which way they would have gone down through to Leominster.

“The site of the find links in with where the Roman road should be, so it does fill in some gaps.”

The groups are, however, remaining tight-lipped about the precise whereabouts of the discovery for the time being as their search for further evidence continues.

Now they have launched a free new service where members will go out with their metal detectors in search of valuables that people have lost while walking, trundling or even frolicking around unfathomable swathes of countryside.

And the group has already recorded several successful missions. The farmer who lost his mobile phone, for one.

“He drew us a diagram of where he thought he had lost it and we went and searched, but we found nothing,” explains Tim.

“A couple of days later one of the lads was back there, 200 yards away, and up came the farmer’s phone. He was over the moon.”

Says Ian: “A lady who phoned up had lost her bible in the loft – apparently it had a metal clasp in it. But a loft is probably the worst place to search because of all the pipes. It could have been anywhere.”

Lost rings are the items the metal detectives are most often asked to find. Or rather retrieve, often following a lovers’ tiff in which the band has been removed from the finger and hurled in anger.

“We get calls where the lady phones up and she wants us to find a ring bought by her boyfriend because they have had an argument and the ring has been thrown away in the heat of the moment,” says Tim.

Another search is on to find a lost wedding and engagement ring after a lady who had been wearing them removed them, believed for work purposes.

Tim continues: “The lady had lost her engagement and wedding ring 60 years ago and her husband was wondering if we could have a look to see if it was still there up a lane in Condover – it would be nice to see if we could find those.”

The group have also unearthed silver love tokens given by men to women (“If she loved you she kept it, if she threw it away we find it”) and a so-called Mizpah, a silver Second World War curio of two adjoining hearts given by women to men going off to battle.

Following a search in the Ludlow area and clutching one of the Roman coins carefully elicited from the ground with the help of a bleeping electronic metal detector, Tim sums up the feeling of hitting upon a find.

“The last person to have picked it up was Roman and I’m the next person to have held it,” he says.

“This coin was an offering to the gods. It’s awesome.”

• For more information about the Delacey Searchers contact Evergreen on 01588 620259 or Tim Roache on 07875 900053.