My friend Rod and I detect together – we form the Gloucestershire Detectorists. In March 2022, we started to detect a new field on one of our permissions. Within a few feet from the track, I hit my first signal. 

Much to my surprise, it was a Roman coin circa 3rd century. Not believing I had been so lucky on my first signal, and to my utter amazement, Rod tells me he had then found a Roman coin just a few feet from me, which transpired to be of the same period.

We knew this just doesn’t happen – not for two people to find a Roman coin at the same time only metres into a field. We knew there was likely to be more, as the first two finds were too much of a coincidence. We continued and sure enough we soon pulled up eight Roman coins, one after the other, all nearby. It was then we knew we had hit something truly special, so I immediately contacted the Finds Liaison Officer at the local museum. We report all finds over 300 years old to them.

By the time we had found a couple more, the FLO contacted me and said he also believed we had discovered a scattered hoard. Our excitement was through the roof, as you can only imagine. He directed us to collect all the loose coins and call him if we found more, so he could attend and excavate.

To date, we haven’t found a remaining buried hoard – either it hasn’t been located or is scattered across the area. After four visits, we’ve found 232 Roman coins from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, as well as a contemporary forgery silver and a solid silver coin.

Moving further out of the hoard area, we have also found half of a silver Roman coin and an early Roman seal matrix.

The hoard and ring will go through the UK’s treasure reporting process.

We’re expecting to find many more as we continue to search this small area. But the Coiltek 10×5” has been truly amazing hunting out these small coins. The pinpoint accuracy is not only amazing, but invaluable when searching such targets.

We want to obtain the 15” coil to help us search deeper and hopefully find the remaining buried hoard should it still exist.

Darren Searle