Andy Bassett has found an extraordinary six hoards in his time using a metal detector. He lives near a special site where he has found an array of historic artefacts. He describes the site...
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00:00Hello there, can you say who you are? Andrew Bassett, my name's Andy.
00:05And Andy, you've made not one but six finds all over the place, but you have a special focus on the tavern site.
00:14Can you tell me about the tavern site?
00:16Sure, I think it was around 2019, 2020, I discovered the Papabulla.
00:21That's a papal seal from Pope Innocent IV, who was Pope from around about 1246 to 1253.
00:29And it was significant for Shropshire, and it was the 1,500,000th find to be recorded on the PAS scheme, Portable Antiquaries Scheme.
00:37Because we knew it was a special coin, I started looking a bit deeper at the site.
00:41We've codenamed it the tavern site because it was close to what we believe is a community tithe barn, a small one,
00:47and people were coming there and doing their business and stopping overnight.
00:51We found some great personal items.
00:53So, without giving away the exact location, whereabouts is it?
00:58Somewhere in Shropshire, it's very close to the River Severn, and it's close to a village called Alverley and Romsley,
01:04which is just south of Bridge North and close to Kidderminster.
01:09And it's a significant site, it's totally unrecorded, and there's a small range of buildings there,
01:15but as I say, we believe it to be similar to, you can equate it to, if you go and do some business,
01:20you might want to stop in Travel Lodge or Premier Inn and do your business and then refresh overnight and away you go.
01:26That's what we think these people were doing, losing their coinage bracelets and perhaps burying their wealth.
01:31So, it's a really exciting historical site.
01:35It really is. So, we've meticulously recorded it and mapped out where I found the finds,
01:42and we've got finds there all the way from the Iron Age, we found some Iron Age brooches,
01:48through to Roman, some beautiful Roman enameled umbernail brooches from the first century,
01:53all the way through to the early medieval coinage.
01:57This hoard from Edward I, around about 1310, it was deposited,
02:04and of course a silver brooch with it as well, which you would have bought from the mint,
02:08and Tudor coinage and post-medieval.
02:12But it's not necessarily worth a lot, even though it's described as treasure,
02:16it's more valuable for its historical...
02:20Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, treasure-wise, you know, people think of the Staffordshire Hoard,
02:26£6 billion and all that sort of thing.
02:28No, I mean, it's a hoard, it's great, it records the history that nobody previously knew,
02:34and when you're the first person to pull it out of the ground in hundreds of years,
02:38it's quite a special moment that you get to record and preserve that history for future generations.
02:44And who knows, you know, in 20, 30, 50, 100 years, the tavern site might be, you know,
02:50fully sort of surveyed and dug and could yield more secrets.
02:54Absolutely brilliant, thank you very much.
02:56Thank you.
02:57I'm sure I'll see you here again.
02:58Yeah, thanks very much.