My First Local Detecting Trip

I am indebted to Chris, the postman in the Yorkshire Dales village of Clapham, for introducing me to a Suffolk detecting enthusiast who I was finally able to meet up with yesterday and share a few hours on one of the fields near his home. The weather was kind to us and we had a very pleasant four hours in near perfect detecting conditions - dry flat soil.

This was the fruit of those four hours. Along with a dozen tiny buttons, a thimble and three small musket balls I managed to find no less than three hammered silver coins. 

I suppose that it's a bit of poetic license to describe these as three hammered coins as, as you can see, none is complete. The top one has probably been hit by a plough which took a chunk away but it remains identifiable as being minted in London and with its ROSA SINE SPINA legend is possibly a penny of Elizabeth I. The second is a cut quarter penny. I need help in identifying it but it dates to the medieval period. The final piece is the clipped edge of a larger coin. Before coins had milled edges it was fairly common practice to clip slivers of silver from the edge of coins. Whoever clipped this one's efforts were wasted. A coin expert could probably hazard a guess at which coin it came from. I think it's likely to be an Elizabethan shilling.

Two other interesting bits that turned up were this lead cloth seal with a crowned lion and this small spectacle buckle. Both of these are likely to date to around the late 16th or early 17th centuries.

I'm very pleased with my first finds and enjoyed the company of detecting with another enthusiast after months of detecting alone. I'm looking forward to meeting up again and also to finding some of my own fields that he will be able to join me on as soon as we get back from a trip to the caravan in Scotland that's planned shortly.