METAL DETECTING
The new seekers
From lumps of iron to large hauls of Roman coins, metal detectorists are never sure what their next find may be. But for many, that’s the joy of the hobby, and why more and more people are taking up the hunt for treasure
by NIGEL RICHARDSON
Dave Crisp from Wiltshire is an enthusiastic metal detectorist, but he hates doing it in the rain. On his most memorable day, the weather was sunny and warm, so he made a decision: he’d do some detecting on a group of farmers’ fields in Somerset that he’d had luck on before. It turned out to be the best decision of his life.
Now 77 and long retired from his job as a hospital chef, Dave still marvels at the role fate played that morning in April 2010 as he swept his detector under blue skies. ‘It worries me sometimes, supposing I’d turned left instead of right?’ he says. ‘But that’s what life is, isn’t it?’ Turning right, he picked up a ‘funny signal’ in his headphones. And so he dug. Until he hit on one of metal detecting’s greatest ever finds – a cache of 52,503 Roman coins dubbed the Frome Hoard after the town nearest to what archaeologists refer to as the ‘find spot’.