Do you know who found the Staffordshire hoard? The hoard of 1,500 gold and silver pieces was found by metal detectorist Terry Herbert in a farmer's field in Staffordshire in July 2009. Containing over 1,500 pieces, mainly gold and many inlaid with precious stones, the Hoard was valued at £3.3.m on 26 November 2009 and declared the most valuable treasure found on British soil. Last month, The Art Fund announced that the Staffordshire Hoard fundraising campaign already ended. National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), pledged £1,285,000, bringing the campaign to the £3.3m target, just over three weeks ahead of schedule.
Photo by National Geographic: Terry Herbert and his Metal detector.The hoard finder, Terry Herbert, an amateur metal-detecting enthusiast and retired wood machinist used to work in a coffin factory. Terry almost losing hope on that Staffordshire field since he can only detect old furniture fittings, bits of clocks and pieces of brass. He decided to carry on and switch machines to the one he called "old faithful". His tenacity paid off. Within 15 minutes, just before noon, Terry's machine began to indicate that it had found something.
"The signal was a bit iffy, a bit broken up,' he said. 'I thought it might just be a piece of silver foil. But I thought I should dig it anyway, just in case."
Using a spade, Terry dug down to a depth of about 14 inches, then got out a probe - a small, hand-held metal detector - and moved it around in the hole until it pin-pointed the exact location of the buried object. It wasn't immediately obvious that he had discovered anything of worth, let alone the first piece of a find that has been likened to stumbling on Tutankhamun's tomb.
"I put me hand in," continues Terry, "and the soil was soft and I saw what looked like a piece of brass. I thought it was just another furniture fitting."
"Then I got my magnifying glass out and that's when it suddenly dawned on me - this could be gold."
Terry carried on and rapidly found three more items. One was from the hand guard of a sword. Another was an intricately decorated sword pommel - the butt end of the handle that was used to 'pommel' your enemy if they were too close for the blade. That afternoon, as easily as if he were uprooting potatoes, Terry pulled a dizzying quantity of gold objects out of the ground, among them a beautifully wrought cross that had been folded and crunched into a ball.
Photo by Timesonline.co.uk: Terry Herbert showing some of the hoardThe first person he told about the discovery is Fred Johnson, the owner of the field. It took a couple of weeks for Fred to believe that Terry had found the biggest Anglo Saxon hoard. The pair considered covering the find, but Fred didn't have a spare vehicle or trailer to park over the spot and so they had to leave the hole as it was, exposed to both the elements and would-be thieves. Now worried that he might be burgled, too, Terry took the gold he had already unearthed to his girlfriend Vicki's house - and kept the treasures in her kitchen cupboard.
Over the next few days, he lived and slept gold. "When I went to bed at night, it went round and round in my head, imagining what I might find next, thinking about the things I had already found."
But after a few days of digging alone, it became too much for Terry and he asked his cousin (one of only three people he had let in on the secret) to report the find to Duncan Slarke, a Finds Liaison Officer. By the time Slarke came round to view the loot, Terry was completely overwhelmed by the scale of the find.
Terry says: "I showed him the first box and he took an object out and just stood there with his eyes really wide and his arms stretched out, and all he could say was "wow!'' Then he asked if there was any more and I told him there were another six boxes. . ."
Once the experts had been called in, the field was investigated in earnest, though Terry and his faithful old metal detector were never far away. They cannot find anything even with the latest gadget then what Terry used. Terry still believe that there is still some pieces in that field. A new and fresh dig is to be held at Staffordshire hoard treasure site. Experts say the work is not expected to turn up any more gold, but could reveal how the original items came to be there.
Source: Dailymail UK.
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