In view of this latest find I was naturally very keen to get into a really detailed search of the main area again as I reasoned that the other half of the groat was still there in the ground and possibly other. The stumbling block was the length of the grass so I came up with the idea of approaching the owner and requesting to mow an area which encompass the circle of the groat hoard and the main body of the Roman hoard (six coins), this area would only be about twenty metres square which would make virtually no impact on any crop being taken off and as the site was not visible from the nearby road and was at the opposite end of the field to any estate track the secrecy of the site would be ensured. The agreed and I arranged to cut the grass on a Friday afternoon ready to spend a whole day on this small area on the Saturday. Despite covering the whole area carefully in one direction, and again at right angles, nothing else was found. I tried again at a later date using my spare machine, but again nothing. Late on in the day the owner came to me in the field to see if anything had been found and suggested I might try extending the mow area and I said I would try when the grass was dry as it had been really difficult mowing when it was wet. At this stage he was also toying with the idea of ploughing the small area of the field but he decided against it in the end. I had also pointed out to him that the best day of finds came after the field had been rolled and he says this may be possible buy I suppose it will be after the corn crops are in. After several days of dry weather I returned to the site and using GPS I put in a flag where each coin had been found and extended the mown area to cover all of the finds then set about detecting, but again no more of the hoard coins were found.
At the end of November I had been to a late evening meeting and consequently did not check my emails for that day and was out early the next morning. On checking my emails in the evening I found that the previous day I had been informed that the geophysical survey of the site had been done that day and I had missed it. When I received the readout I realised that only about half of the area had been covered and there was little to make on it because of all the rubbish still in the ground related to the camp site. The decision was taken to not do a further survey as the results were too inconclusive but it was hoped to do an excavation in the late spring.
Over the holiday period and into the new year, dodging the snow and frozen ground I managed to do a bit more detecting on the field and worked in a random pattern and came up with the remains of another Denarius, badly damaged and with the legend completely missing, over 100 metres away from the hoard site.
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| Denarius Remains |
When I found this it appeared to be just a piece of rubbish and if it had been found anywhere else would probably been consigned to the rubbish box, I only scrutinised it further because it was on the hoard field and at about the same depth as the earlier finds.
This find prompted another systematic sweep of the field using my row of poles to guide me, no more Roman coins but I did come up with a half ring brooch
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| Half Ring Brooch |
During further visits I found little but modern objects mostly associated with the festival until July when the grass had been cut ready for the next festival and during one day I found two Edward I pennies and a complete ring brooch all away from the hoard site.
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| Edward I Pennies |
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| Completer Ring Brooch |
At last after several false starts I heard that funding had been obtained to do a dig on the site to undertaken by Dr Fraser Hunter, Principal Curator Iron Age and Roman at the Nation Museum of Scotland on a date in October 2012. As the time approached I checked that it was still on schedule and offered to got out before the event and flag the positions of the coin finds using GPS. I further contacted the farmer and arranged for him to cut the grass in the area which I marked out because by this time of the year the grass and clover had grown to a height which made detecting impossible and would certainly make spade work really difficult.
I was out early on the day of the start of the dig to rake off the cut grass, this was hard work and took about two and half hours. I had time to give the area a quick once over with the detector but only found two twenty pence pieces and a five pence plus several ring pulls and some rusty tent pegs. I then put in flags in the positions of the Roman coins (white) and the Robert coins (red) and had my lunch while I waited for the Archaeologists from Edinburgh.
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