Treasure hunters dig up fun ways

Bill Martin sweeps a metal detector from side to side over the grass, straining his ears for the sound of even the faintest beep. Suddenly he stops walking as the detector alerts him.

There is a metal object in the ground below his feet. Grabbing a shovel, the 59-year-old, of Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, digs out a small mound of earth and puts on a pair of surgical gloves to work through the soil. His fingers land on a muddy disk and after cleaning it he pockets it.

His latest find is a penny dropped 100 years ago. "I have been metal detecting for six years and each time I go out I want to find something even more older and valuable," says Bill, a member of Bloxwich Research and Metal Detecting Club.

"When I found a coin from 79AD I thought it doesn't get much better than this but then I found a 1500BC Bronze Age axe near Wolverhampton and a 48BC coin from Julias Ceasar's era, which was made in a travelling mint.

"Then I like getting home and looking on the internet - it is an amazing feeling when you pick up a coin that someone dropped 2,000 years ago." This year Bloxwich Research and Metal Detecting Club celebrates its 30th anniversary.Club secretary Jim Wall, 55, of Burntwood says of the thriving group with more than 120 members: "Our season starts at the end of July when more of the fields become available. We find Georgian and Victorian coins July to September but as the weather starts to change and the ground gets damper we start getting smaller and older artefacts. There are Roman sites such as Wall in South Staffordshire but they were not big towns, they were just forts, so it can be difficult to get good finds in this area.

"You have to find a landowner who is happy for you to go on to their land.

"A metal detectorist wouldn't dream of going onto someone's field without permission. If you find something valuable on someone else's land you have to tell them about it. If it qualifies under the Treasure Act of 1996 you have to inform the coroner and it has to go through an inquest.

"To qualify under the act the item has to be over 300-years-old and contain at least 10 per cent gold and silver - that is when it becomes potential treasure. If it is a single coin by itself it is not treasure but two or more coins together, which qualify under the act, have to be reported. We tend to focus on South Staffordshire and the West Midlands because once you go further South you have a lot of built-up areas.

"Mainly we find medieval and Roman items. We found a hoard of 23 Denarii silver coins around Shenstone. We had to inform someone about this and we were given £500, which we split with the landowner.

"Eighteen months ago we found a bomb from the second world war in Cannock near Hatherton Hall. The bomb disposal squad from Hereford came in and blew it up.

"I found a Saxon gold pendant near Burntwood and the big thrill is knowing that it had been lost for 1,400 years and it is now at the Potteries museum in Stoke-On-Trent. I found the pendant in 2004 but I started being a detectorist in 1976 so you don't usually find these things straight away. Despite finds like this we are not treasure hunters - it costs more to buy the equipment and it take a long time to find valuable items."

They have a junior section where the youngest member is 10, he says.

"Our oldest member is 80 and it is not just men that come along, we also have some loyal female members."

* For more information about the Bloxwich Research and Metal Detecting Club call Jim Wall on 01543 276482.