Detecting Under the Microscope: Getting it All Out (The Corringham Hoard)

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Two members of the Wickford Metal Detecting Society used a mechanical excavator in Corringham last summer to make sure they'd recovered all the coins in a hoard they'd found so they'd get more of a reward to split. The haul of 14th century coins discovered in August 2009, is reported as "worth up to £50,000". It was found by Brian Smyth, 65, a retired Argos worker from Rayleigh, and Nick Rowntree, 57, from Rochford. These two have both been metal detecting about 25 years but declared this recent find "as their biggest ever" at the inquest on Friday.

The pair discovered the medieval ‘piggy bank’ containing almost the whole range of English currency circulating in the late 1300’s, including a substantial number of large gold and silver coins, whilst out on their weekly Sunday morning treasure hunt. Brian told the Enquirer: “We’ve been metal detecting on this same field for over 25 years so we weren’t expecting to find anything. We’d been out for two hours and Nick was back in the car ready to go when I got a ‘beep’.

The newspaper report states that Brian said he'd dug down "about a foot and a half" and then started digging out a large number of coins from the soil, the story goes on to assert that he was "ready to go home before his friend Nick joined in uncovering a further haul of gold coins on the edge of the hole". So at what stage should the pair have stopped digging and called the archaeologists in, before or after they got the earth stripping machinery in? What was the context of deposition of this find? Is the depth of "a foot and a half" (0.45m) within the ploughsoil in this field, or below it?

Phil Harrison, 'Medieval coin haul worth thousands dug up in Corringham', Essex Enquirer 14/10/2011

Vignette: The Corringham I remember.