East of England named as hotspot for finding treasure
Norfolk was the top county to seek out treasure as 104 discoveries were made there in 2020, figures show.
Anyone hoping to find buried treasure should head to the east of England.
The region is the top spot for treasure discoveries, according to provisional figures from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), with some 249 finds made last year.
The statistics, which cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland, show Norfolk was the top county to seek out treasure as 104 discoveries were made there while 51 finds happened in Essex.
Lincolnshire was another hotspot for treasure discoveries as 47 finds were made in 2020.
There were 1,077 discoveries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland last year, making it the seventh year in a row that the number of treasure finds topped 1,000.
A breakdown of the types of objects found in 2020 is not yet available.
The BBC show Detectorists, starring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook, about eccentric metal detectorists who hope to unearth the fortune of a lifetime in north Essex may have had a part to play in the number of treasures unearthed.
Detailed figures available for 2019 show 1,303 treasures were found, including 1,246 finds from metal detecting.
Among the discoveries were 1,060 objects dating from a range of periods including the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, medieval and the 18th-21st centuries.
These were described as “object cases”, meaning they are non-coin finds. There were also 243 coin cases among the treasures reported in 2019.
Museums also managed to bolster their collections as 352 discoveries were either acquired or donated to them.
The DCMS figures show the number of reported treasure finds for 2019 and provisional figures for 2020 within England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
