"Flogitoff" is Robinson

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I've just received a comment (thanks, Mo) alerting me to the fact that the Mirror has revealed the name of the landowner ('Farmer Eric Robinson reaps £2.3m from treasure-hunter's helmet find' 9/10/10)

A hard-up farmer is celebrating after a Roman helmet dug up on his land by a treasure hunter made him a record £2.3million. Eric Robinson, 56, thought the precious 2,000-year-old helmet would only fetch about £20,000 at auction when the unnamed student uncovered it his field. But several mystery bidders at Christie's in London on bumped up the price and it sold in just three minutes. The grandad, who works 70 hours a week on his farm at Crosby Garrett, Cumbria, said: "My legs went to jelly. When you've been farming for years and made no real money, it's a big amount. "To think it has been in the ground all those years".

Just think, lying there in an archaeological layer in the fields he owns, but generations of predecessors also did without feeling the need to flog off the archaeological finds ... Lets hope farmer Robinson has no more nationally important archaeological sites or findspots in his fields, other wise he'd be letting the treasure hunters empty them.

Another more local newspaper gives us some interesting food for thought (Thom Kennedy, 'Fight on to keep Crosby Garrett Roman helmet in Britain', News & Star 9/10/10):

The farmer on whose land the helmet said he would have liked it to stay in Cumbria, but Eric Robinson remained tight lipped over whether he will receive any of the money raised from Thursday’s auction. “It’s quite amazing [that it was worth so much],” he said. “I would have liked it to be kept in Cumbria but I can’t do anything about it.” Mr Robinson said the man who found it had been coming to his farm for seven years and ‘hit the jackpot’ with this find. He added: “I saw it when he found it. It looked very special, like it was pretty important.”

Did it? A box of bits like the ones the PAS photographed in Christie's (except "when he found it" surely it was covered in mud/clay?). That is one odd thing the farmer on whose land the helmet was found says in this interview. There is another one though. The journlist wrote "Eric Robinson remained tight lipped over whether he will receive any of the money raised from Thursday’s auction". What an odd phrase; "remained tight lipped" suggests to me that the question was asked, "Mr Robinson, this helmet was found on your land, will you receive any of the money raised from Thursday’s auction?". What a dumb stupid question, in normal circumstances. [The helmet is his property, the question would be better phrased whether he would be sharing the cash with the treasure hunters who found it on his land. If he lost his prize bull the day before it was due to go to market, and the treasure hunters found it behind his barn, would they expect half the money made when he sells it?] So why on earth did Thom Kennedy ask such an odd thing? Why would the landowner not receive any of the money if it was found ON HIS LAND? What an odd thing to write. Unless Thom Kennedy has heard something in the village... a rumour perhaps about the nature of some strange deal whether verbal or written between Mr Robinson and The Anonymous Single Finder (who is now plural)? Odd.

Let us recall something Roger Bland wrote here:

Christie's asked for the PAS reference number but we declined to record it until we were satisfied that we had a precise findspot. We stressed to Christie's that no museum could consider buying it without that information and without assurance that the object was being sold with the agreement of the landowner.

It was "the Finder" who brought the object to Christie's, it was "the Finder" that refused to reveal where it had been found. It was when PAS pointed out that unless the landowner was produced, the object would not sell as well, so then - and only then - a/the landowner was produced and a findspot to match. What was the Crosby Garrett landowner's place in the sale of this object before that?

UPDATE: A reader who is better at such things than me has located farmer Robinson and his farm, its in the centre of the village just 2 km from the enclosures on the fell pictured in a post below this.

UPDATE (2): This is scary, Sunday morning I received more information dug up on the internet by two different people (neither of whom are policemen with special privileges); it is quite horrifying just how much information you can find out there about somebody, family business partners etc. Obviously I'm not going to share it here, but it adds some background to some of the puzzling features of what-we-are-not-being-told by those involved. All this of course really makes a mockery of the reasons that would no doubt be given why the details of who what where and when "has" to be kept a secret. No man is an island, even in Crosby Garrett, it seems.