Fields of dreams: a detectorists’ holiday in Suffolk

“Gold! Gold!” the cry goes up. In the middle of the stubble field an American named Raymond Jones is so excited he is virtually dancing a jig. We drop our metal detectors, run over and there, sure enough, at the bottom of a shallow hole, a tiny gold disc glints in the sandy soil of coastal Suffolk.

Jones gingerly lifts it out. John French, our archaeological expert, sprays it with water. As the dirt dissolves an intricate pattern appears on its surface, and some sort of inscription around its edge. “It’s an Edward III gold quarter noble, dating from the 14th century,” French exclaims. “It’s the find of a lifetime.”

Jones is beside himself. The goateed, baseball-capped government contractor from Leesburg, Virginia, exchanges fist bumps and handshakes with his fellow detectorists. “I never in a million years thought I’d find a gold hammered coin,” he says. “I was in disbelief when I first saw it in the hole. When you first see something like that you think your eyes are playing a trick on you and maybe it’s just gold aluminium foil.”

That is just one of the day’s many finds. Between a dozen of us we unearth a 14th-century ring with a blue stone set in it, a gilded Saxon buckle, assorted Roman coins, ornate medieval bronze brooches, buckles and horse ornaments, old musket balls and much else besides. I’m amazed how much we find in a single field, albeit one close to what was once a prosperous 12th-century priory. 

And this is only the first day of a three-day metal-detecting holiday, a novel sort of break recently launched by the owners of Butley Priory in coastal Suffolk’s Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to capitalise on the popularity of the television series Detectorists. 

My own contribution to this haul is, admittedly, rather more modest: a couple of bronze buttons, two ancient nails, various scraps of twisted lead, a bent coin that I get very excited about until French informs me it is merely a 1931 halfpenny, and a metal disc with concentric circles on it. French laughs when I show it to him. “It’s the end of a 12-bore cartridge,” he says.

But I do come to understand the thrill of metal detecting as I walk slowly across the field, swinging my detector from side to side and listening for beeps in my headphones.

They come often but I’m waiting for a strong, resonant, repeatable beep that indicates something solid may be buried beneath the earth. I then get down on my knees and begin shovelling, not knowing whether I’ll find a silver ring or modern ring-pull, an ancient seal or a scrap of 21st-century foil from a tractor driver’s sandwich wrapping. It’s like fishing, always believing you might catch a whopper at any moment. 

Getting the right beep is one thing, finding its source quite another. I check each clod that I remove with my detector to narrow it down. Then I use a torch-like device called a pinpointer to home in. Even then I have to crumble the last bits of soil with my fingers to spot the tiny bit of encrusted metal it conceals. 

How exciting it is finally to lift out a coin, ring or medieval brooch, knowing you are the first person to see or touch that artefact in many centuries. And how these tiny traces of our forebears spark the imagination. Who lost that gold quarter noble, and how? Which lady mislaid her silver ring, and in what circumstances? Who was it that owned such beautiful brooches? Could any of our haul conceivably have belonged to Mary Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII, who used the priory as a hunting lodge?

As one of our number put it: “It’s like we’re shaking hands with the past.”

Butley Priory was founded in 1171 and was home to more than 80 Augustinian canons and dependants until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the late 1530s. Little now remains of the 20-acre compound except for a magnificent 14th-century gatehouse.

Today the site belongs to the Greenwell family. At weekends the gatehouse is used mostly for weddings, but the idea of offering midweek metal-detecting breaks occurred to Clare Greenwell, wife of Sir Edward Greenwell, while the couple were watching Detectorists during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

The popular BBC series, starring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook, was filmed around this part of East Suffolk. Close by is Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon royal burial site that features in the 2021 film The Dig. So is the recently discovered site of a 1,400-year-old settlement in Rendlesham built by East Anglia’s first kings. So, too, is a 12th-century castle that lies a brief ferry ride (in a tiny rowing boat) across the Butley Creek at Orford. Indeed, the whole area, now relatively remote, was once densely populated thanks to its light, easily worked soil and ready access to the sea. 

“It is a detectorists’ heaven, a golden triangle,” says Clare Greenwell who, having overcome her husband’s initial doubts, has since begun selling packages that include three nights in the lovely 12-bedroom Georgian farmhouse on the priory site where wedding parties usually stay, plus breakfasts, dinners and packed lunches prepared by a private chef, lectures on local history and archaeology, expert guides and all the necessary equipment.

The group I join consists of 11 Americans, most of them men, led by Butch Holcombe, a larger-than-life retired machinist who publishes American Digger Magazine (circulation 5,000) with his wife, Anita, from their home in Marietta, Georgia. 

They wear red T-shirts proclaiming: “American Digger Magazine Goes to England! Suffolk Sandlands 2023.” Most are passionate life-long detectorists, and each has brought as many as three of his or her own metal detectors with them.

I’d never gone detecting before, and I was not sure what to expect. To me it had always seemed a strange, solitary occupation, though Andy Sampson, our other expert, disagreed. “On a scale of nerd, trainspotter and metal detector, I’d put us at quite cool,” he joked before telling us how, not long ago, he had found 54 Roman coins in a field at nearby Wantisden. They turned out to be fakes left behind by the Detectorists film crew. “Fool’s gold”, was the headline in the Daily Mail; “Finders weepers” in the Sun.

But in the event I found a very accessible and thoroughly absorbing pastime. No great skills are required beyond perseverance, learning to read the signals from your detector and an ability to pick likely spots near tracks, water sources or other such places where our ancestors would have congregated.

The Greenwells’ American guests were positively ecstatic. Back home, none of them had previously found anything predating the 1700s or American war of independence but, by the end of three balmy late September days of detecting in the ploughed-up potato, onion and carrot fields around Butley Priory, they had filled the “finds” bags on their waists with treasures.

The final tally comprised 10 Roman coins including minims, denarii and a sestertius, two Roman brooches and a fragment of Roman tweezers; three Saxon buckles and a 7th-century cruciform brooch; a piece of a Viking game; umpteen medieval coins, buckles, brooches, studs, clasps, rings, jettons, spoons, metal trading tokens and a lead matrix seal; and any number of coins and other artefacts dating from the 17th century onwards.   

“It has been the most fantastic three days of metal detecting I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing it 52 years now,” Holcombe declared. “What’s been found has blown my mind.”

For now, the treasures will remain in Britain. All those more than 50 years old will be reported to Suffolk County Council and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Any deemed to be of particular historical significance may be offered to museums. The rest will be granted export licences but the Greenwells will be entitled to half the value of any worth more than £200. Sampson and French reckon the gold quarter noble alone may be worth £1,000 or more; the Greenwells will probably seek to buy Jones’s share so they can add it to their growing collection.

The biggest prize has yet to be found, though. The legend is that Michael de la Pole, the 3rd Earl of Suffolk who was killed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, lies buried in a silver coffin somewhere in the priory’s grounds. Imagine finding that.  

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