Saturday, 23 November 2019

Exclusive: Hiding Place of Leominster Haul Identified?


Who's that digging? 
As to the fate of the rest of the hoard, Powell's barrister James Tucker told the judge his client, who is a father of two, "isn't in a position to assist" their recovery.
Well, he won't, in jail. It's got nothing to with how many kids he's fathered. A late night phonecall to me from the West of England gave a clue to where the Leominster Four hid the remaining items (believed to be c. 270 coins and ingots and other stuff) from the infamous hoard and they say that it's right under everybody's noses. My anonymous interlocutor told me their reasoning behind the gang's decision. It cannot be the stockroom of the two dealers involved, the police will have searched there. (interestingly, what other artefacts did they find there and ignore - in Mr Wicks' stock for example?) It cannot be a deposit box in a bank or security firm as this would leave a paper trail. Obviously, metal detectorists would have buried it. But there is a snag, metal detecting buddies of these two metal detecting buddies will be thinking the same thing and locating the 'permissions' of everyone involved and fanning out there late at night for weeks (another reason not to let metal detectorists on your land in the first place). Or a nighthawk could stumble on it wholly accidentally if it's in a searchworthy location.

Where is the one place nobody would look? Obviously a field so well emptied by archaeologists and subsequent intruders that there is now nothing likely to be left of what had been there. There is just one such field in the whole of Western England, and its not far from the homes of three of the Four. It's near a road junction, just off the motorway in a small remote place called Hammerwich. The field is completely sterile, but that, according to my informant is exactly the place where the Leominster Hoard has been redeposited, waiting for the first of the jailed men to get out and go and reclaim it. Perhaps it is worth the archaeologists mounting a proper investigation of that findspot and the area around it, just in case he's right. Time is running out.


1 comment:

  1. Hiding it on the Staffs Hoard field will work very well so long as they bury it below 30 cm, the depth the archaeologists' Ebex 420H machines reached!

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