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Lenborough Manor Farm
Dec 2009 (top) and April 2017
(Google Earth) |
A farmer in Buckinghamshire was paid a lot of money because a metal detectorist found a hoard of coins on his land... That money is paid because the find was deemed a 'national Trasure'. Nigel Swift and I have suggested that when a find is declared Treasure, its findspot should be protected by an arbitrary buffer zone having the status of a Scheduled site to prevent further damage. that is not what the Brits do, they pay out for the find, but the national Treasure findspot is totally neglected. As here. It is not clear from the satellite photos what damage has been one here and why, but it looks bad, there are deep wheelruts, and a road has been bulldozed (?) across the fishponds, The findspot (red square in the top photo - reconstructed as best I can from the photos taken during the 'excavation') in the middle of one of the tofts by the hollow way has been flattened it seems. Scandal. The site is not protected in any way. Farmers in receipt of large Treasure rewards should be asked to look after the sites concerned and their landscape values and not damage them into oblivion.
When will we see the publication of the planigraphy of the metal detected finds across the area during the rally that took place here when the FLO was in attendance?
2 comments:
Is the Staffordshire Hoard field protected?
And, if the archaeologists give in to the calls to look again and deeper and find more will the original finder and farmer be entitled to more dosh?
Well, I was wondering whether that was the point of damaging these earthworks, but - apart from the wheelruts - on Google Earth it does not look that deep. But a terrible shame, a site that is being serially mistreated and eroded. First the metal detecting rally, now this.
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