Abbey Cottages — Discovery!

It is my intention to write an account here of my discovery and subsequent exploration of a single period site located in Rainham, Essex, which dated from probably the early 19th-century and which terminated at some time in the early 20th century.  I will also endeavour to picture and catalogue all the finds made on the site over the time that I spent there because I hope that this will be a valuable resource for those interested in rural working class domestic life during the 19th Century. 

The site was capped during landscaping work later on in the 1990's and now lays beneath a great deal of extra imported soil. This protects it, but at the time this meant that no further work could take place and so I did not manage to retrieve much in the way of pottery. Nevertheless, what I did discover in the way of metallic objects tells a story that I think is necessary to record. 

Abbey Cottages once stood at Abbey Wood by Berwick Pond and were built upon a low gravel hillock set in marshy land close to the River Ingrebourne. When I stumbled upon the plot one day in 1993 the cottages had been long demolished. There was nothing visible to suggest that they had ever existed and only by following a trail of finds along the trackway which once led to them did I discover the evidence of them.

I was out on my bike prospecting for a new site to work on. I came to what I knew was a very old lake, thought that it looked a good place to search, and so I asked the fishery bailiff if I might and he gave permission. There were a few small fields to go at, but firstly, I tried detecting on the wide grass verge of the trackway that led from the main road along which anglers parked their cars. To my surprise, I did not locate lead fishing weights as I had expected to, but immediately made finds of late 18th and 19th-century date and these were mostly thimbles and 'dandy' buttons.

The trail of these finds petered out in the eastward direction but strengthened in the westward, and so I continued to follow it in that direction and eventually arrived at what appeared to be a gravel vehicle ramp ... 

To the left of this 'ramp' was a dense thicket of thorn bushes and to the right-hand side was a steep drop-off with a small field that was full of cattle about five or six feet below. It terminated at a roughly made barbed-wire fence beyond which I beheld a positively lunar landscape.  The ground had been churned up everywhere by the hooves of the cattle who clearly had free access to the area, and here and there were sorry looking spindly bushes nibbled to near extinction. 

I concentrated upon the ramp for the remainder of the afternoon continuing to find buttons — but they were not at all easy to dig. The ground was highly compacted and it was a lot of effort recovering anything. It was time well spent, though. For their age, they were all preserved in truly excellent condition and when an 18th-century Sheffield plate military button came along I was best pleased.

Officer's tunic button of the Essex Light Dragoons, 1794.
(See references at bottom of page)

At home, I pondered these novel discoveries and decided to return to the ramp the very next day. The recovery of finds dropped off fairly quickly, of course, and so I was forced into the thicket where I spent the rest of the morning struggling through it. However, the finds rate rose considerably when I found myself digging musket ball after musket ball and all spread across one small area.  I must have found ten before I found anything else (eventually amassing a collection of at least fifty of them) but I thought it to be well worth all the effort expended.  

I remember having to really struggle with one signal which was gotten at arm's length through a particularly prickly bramble bush. Finally, I got my trowel in, dug around through the thick leaf mould and managed to recover it from the topsoil. I expected yet another musket ball to be hiding inside the clod of hard-won soil clenched safely in my left hand but was surprised to see a truly lovely object fall into the palm of the right ...

Here was a find to get the heart racing — a Georgian fob seal! It was in such lovely condition, with traces of gilding in every recess and where the gilt had rubbed through to brass, the most gorgeous, lush dark-green patina. And it was complete, too! It still held its white stone intaglio, which was carved with a little crouched rabbit or hare. I thought to myself, that without any inscription that would give away the name of the erstwhile owner, that this animal must be a hare after all, and the loser — a Mr or Mrs Hare ... 

O'Hare, even! 

I pocketed this find and continued on, only to be arrested in my tracks a short while later by the worrying sight of a pair of approaching police officers. I really thought that I was about to be chucked off-site. Fortunately, it turned out that they had had other business to attend to which had led them nowhere fast and now they'd found an interest in what I was up to. We talked for some time about the finds that I had made, and curiously one seemed to know something (if not much!) about them.

I could not work this out for some time; bemused to be in conversation at such a level of understanding with a member of the constabulary — but what I had failed to apprehend until an introduction was made, was that this knowledgeable officer was a detectorist too and was also a member of my local detecting club. We'd already met in civvies!

People can look so utterly 'other' when in uniform, can't they?

References;

1. Dixon Noonan Webb

Raised in March 1794 by Montague Burgoyne, of Harlow, the Essex Light Dragoons saw service in Ireland at the time of the French invasion in 1798. It was disembodied sometime in 1799 and, to mark the occasion each officer and man who had served throughout the regiment’s existence was presented with a medal by their Commanding Officer. 

2. History of the Essex Yeomanry
In 1794, six Troops of the ‘Loyal Essex Regiment of Fencible Cavalry’ were formed from the Harlow area, to be later renamed ‘The Essex Light Dragoons’, against threats of a French invasion with landings on the Essex Coast. In 1797 the 1st Essex Yeomanry Cavalry Troop was raised, in Coopersale, followed by the Chelmsford Hundred Yeomanry: by 1798 there were fifteen such Yeomanry Cavalry Troops throughout Essex named, in many cases, after the village, district or landowner where they raised

The Park — Yet Another Most Curious Object

Yesterday was wet. Very wet. I had decided to go out early on the pasture once again but was delayed and so with rain predicted to arrive in Coventry around the two o'clock mark, I decided to dress up for the occasion and go out regardless. The field was mine for once with the sheep all congregated at the far end and the cattle making their way to the cattle shed. Super!

I decided to stick to the footpath that once ran along the border of the field. I'd found a button and a coin at some depth on my first trial dig there, had been forced off the second time around, but now I would be able to see if more of the same would be found. The answer was affirmative and I dug four coins, one after the other. All were at depths from six to ten inches and I was pleased to be able to convert some very faint and even scratchy signals into worthwhile recoveries. I was also pleased that a halfpenny found at around the eight-inch mark gave a very clear signal indeed.

And I have to say that I was also, also, pleased that these finds of coins from this field were following a logical pattern. A linear pattern. A footpath pattern. The kind of pattern that the annual ploughing of fields muddles with so much that nothing is ever so clear cut ...

One thing that I have noticed about the XP ADX150 is that signals do not improve much in either clarity or loudness when the first clod of earth is removed. This would be normal for the Laser B1, whose signals always seem to improve by doing this. Nevertheless, the field is very quiet and when signals are encountered no matter how uncertain they may sound once the hole is deepened, I have found that I might as well continue digging just to see what happens. I would not have recovered the deepest coin if I had not ...

A few other old scraps were found amongst which was part of a broken 18th buckle, but there wasn't much modern trash to contend with — and that is a very good sign! 

Only when I ventured out into the middle of the field did I turn up an interesting artefact. At first, I really thought that I'd found one half of a Medieval folding mirror case. It was just the right size and shape but even covered in wet sticky mud I could see that if it was one of those, then it was also a very unusual one indeed. Another addition to my growing collection of Most Curious Objects, perhaps?

At the moment I am confused about this object. It is the right size and is the right form for a folding mirror case of Medieval date and viewed from one direction is really looks like one. However, viewed from the reverse side it has the most curious 'attachments' riveted upon it. They look like claws! Also, it possesses one remaining lug and the remains of another which suggest that some kind of brooch pin once existed. That, or something similar.

Given the date of the other finds made, I am going with Post-Medieval and some kind of folding pocket thingy. That's my best shot at the moment, I'm afraid.

Now I'm going out to see if I can find the other half, which if it comes and I hope that it does, may clarify matters somewhat! 

The Park — Pasture ... Oh, Lovely Pasture!

Pasture ...

Oh, lovely pasture!

I'd forgotten just how lovely pasture land could be ...

I'd also forgotten about the very many frustrations that it might impose upon the detectorist!

The pasture land that we have, consists of two large fields one of which is poorly preserved ridge and furrow and the other was once part of the deer park surrounding a Medieval moated house. Promising, you might say, but just because both fields have Medieval usage written all over them, this means very little. They may still prove to contain not very much in the way of Medieval material.

There are also two smaller fields, one of which is tiny and was my first port of call. There I dug modern detritus at the full depth of the topsoil — and so I let it be! The second small field was quiet and when I dug a WW2 webbing buckle at eight-inches I thought that to be about right for an item of such a date. I then tried the deer park field which was quiet also, but then I spotted a lone sheep away from the flock and defending a feed trough. Of course, this was a ram, and a big boy he was! 

I really don't mind being amongst ewes and lambs. I really don't mind being amongst cows, heifers and calves. I really do mind being anywhere near rams and bulls because they are territorial and will kill to defend what is rightfully theirs — which is the right to procreate!

The ram watched me and I watched the ram. I could not concentrate on detecting until I reached the other side of the field and the relative safety of a handy barbed-wire fence that I could dive over should things turn bad. This fence marked the route of an ancient footpath. And so I detected along it hoping to find evidence that the field would give up items of some age and at a reasonable depth. 

It did. A Georgian tunic button at around seven inches depth and a Victoria penny at around nine inches. I was very pleased with this because it may mean that the field will provide ancient items that have not sunk so far down as to be out of range to a deepish-seeking machine such as the XP ADX150.

And then the cattle, who had been grazing in the ridge and furrow field returned to the deer park. This did not worry me unduly until one of them mounted another when I knew that a bull was on site! And so I departed the field for the one just across the handy barbed-wire fence ... 

Immediately!

And so, my desired pasture experiment was over before it had really begun...

This 'safe' field was arable and one that I had detected a few times before. It had not provided much in the way of good finds but what finds it had provided seemed, on average, to be older than those from Polly's Parlour next door. Once again, it lived up to this trend with the occasional Georgian button, some old coinage and other odds and ends — but then, up from the earth came a very interesting fragment of a bronze — err — vessel?

I'd never seen anything like this. However, I had seen many things that certain elements of its decoration reminded me of. For instance, the background stippling which consists of repetitively punched annulets made with the same tool ... 

Punched annulets? What do they say? 

I don't know about you ... but, Medieval and earlier is what they say to me!

What the 'anchor-shaped' element means I cannot imagine. That it was once part of a larger design is for certain, but what kind of design would that have been? All that I can say is that linear elements in Saxon and Romanesque art were often longitudinally divided by two lines into three parts.

Also, it is in remarkably good condition if it is indeed of such an age. The metal is so clean that it appears to have been in the ground for just a few tens of years. However, the nearby river was redirected in the late 19th century and once again in the nineteen-eighties when an arterial road was constructed across it. It may have been buried under river gravels for many centuries and then deposited in the field within a load of dredged spoil.

Bronze items from such a context can stay just as fresh and sharp as the day they were deposited, believe me. But of course, it may just be modern — but if so, then I cannot imagine just what kind of modern object it could be from.

However, it is whatever it is, and is from whenever it was made, and nothing whatsoever can change that fact!

But finding that fact?

We'll see ... 

A Ploughsharing Upon the Berkshire Downs

On Sunday morning we went along to an organised dig in Berkshire. This would be Judy's first taste of an extended period of time spent detecting and I was interested to see how she would cope with a full six-hour session. Mind you, having got back into the swing of things only recently, I was just as interested in seeing how I'd cope because a four-hour stint I find quite tiring at the moment. Though I am slowly building stamina, I cannot imagine how I used to cope with sessions lasting six, eight, nine, ten or even twelve hours in length!

"Youth" you might say?

Pah! I was already over the hill when I began!

We'd arrived at the predetermined destination only to find nobody there! We'd then scratched at our heads awhile and then we'd decided that the participants must have decided against detecting in such an exposed location on such a breezy day. They must have decamped to somewhere less unfriendly nearby, we'd thought. We'd then decided to backtrack up the main road whilst I kept a lookout for a hoard of figures winding their ways across a field. Luckily we'd found them in a set of fields at the next village along.

It seems that I have a Berkshire relative ...

Enough of we'd!

We chose to start in a field by the main road. Nobody else seemed to want to bother with it and were focussed upon the field right next to the village, for obvious reason. All the fields available were under wheat stubble and the stalks, though just three or four inches tall, were pretty stiff. This is not my idea of detecting heaven and in the past, I would never set foot on such a field unless there really were no better options available. There always were — I had three thousand acres of prime and very productive Essex farmland at my disposal back then.

It was tough going. I chose to work the tractor tracks so that I could more easily identify areas that might be worthwhile concentrating upon, but Judy proceeded to skim the stalks from the outset. Both of these approaches had their advantages and disadvantages. My approach meant that digging in such compacted stony ground would be a trial of patience while for Judy, digging in the uncompacted high stubble would be relatively easy by comparison. However, she would sacrifice her finds rate by doing so and limit herself to large and surface objects, but I would be able to locate even the tiniest items and find everything that lay in my path.

After spending four arduous hours in this field we'd had more than enough of it and so we decamped to the village pub for lunch and refreshment where we could share thoughts about our first proper plough experience together, when I could show my finds to Judy and most importantly, I could take a gander at the contents of her bulging finds pouch. 

Although I knew full well that Judy's inexperience meant that under such tough conditions she would locate far fewer positive signals than I — I didn't realise that I would retrieve five times as many non-ferrous items as she ...

This was cause for concern but I really had no idea how to address the issue. I guess that wheat stubble is something that every British detectorist must learn how to cope with but I hadn't banked on such a great discrepancy between our performances. I thought that maybe it was her ADX150 at fault but having already established to my own satisfaction that it is capable of performing just as well (on an average field) as my Laser B1, that thought was put aside. 

I hadn't watched her at work but of course, she had been skimming the top of the stubble and not actually penetrating it very far. She also complained that pinpointing objects would cost her a great deal of time. I asked her how much time on average she thought she'd have to dig in order to locate each signal and she replied  ~

"Maybe five, ten, even fifteen minutes ..." 

She then asked what length of time I would typically spend on digging a target ~

"Uh, about one minute at most unless it's a tiny, tiny thing!"

Two items found within a few feet of each other. On the right is a tiny, tiny thing. To my mind, if a detector fails to locate such items as this then it is useless because at just 11mm diameter this little decorated silver mount is the size of a Saxon sceat or tremissis.  If you look at the picture of my finds from this day then you will see other items that are even smaller than this and one that is just a third of its size. The Laser B1 has no trouble with such scraps of metal. I don't yet know if the XP ADX150 is up to the job. The larger object is a mystery at this moment. It is decorated on both sides with the same design and so it must be part of the handle for something that would be viewed from either direction. Period? Roman or Georgian, I reckon ...  

Now, I had had some trouble with the ADX150 when pinpointing because it has a DD coil while the B1 has a concentric one. They perform very differently, but because I had absolutely no prior experience of using a DD coil, I believed it would work just like a concentric one. You know — it would be exactly on spot every time. It wasn't. Compared to the absolute precision with which the B1 pinpoints targets, the position of the target given by the 150 always seemed uncertain. I had to see a diagram of its search pattern in order to understand why so often I would begin to dig in the wrong place and waste a lot of time by doing so. 

Aahh! The sweet, sweet smell of freedom from toil!

After lunch, we moved to another field that had been released around mid-afternoon. People had already come, tried and gone. We met a fella on his way out who'd dug just two signals in an hour! However, this field was perfect because although it would prove to be almost completely devoid of finds it was almost completely clear of stubble and so I could watch Judy at work on a dead flat surface.

She began by swinging the coil upwards at the end of every pass — bad girl!

This was soon corrected and then she enjoyed a happy couple of hours under very little physical strain and actually outperformed me by finding three .303 bullets to my one shirt button (a Birmingham branded example no less!) which I thought odd, because earlier I'd found six spent .303 shell casings in the field just across the road ...

Had they fired at targets placed in this field and through passing traffic, I wondered?

She even seemed to have mastered pinpointing by close of play. By walking about the signal in all directions she managed to locate the true centre of the signal and thereby spent a great deal less time than she previously had in the necessary job of retrieving her targets quickly. This lesson taught me something important ...

But at the very last — I outclassed her when I found what I believe may be the first two objects from a significant hoard of the same because they were both located within just a few feet of each other ...

Gaming Pieces — When Playing At Teetotum

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games - 1560 

In Pieter Breugel's 1560 painting, Children's Games, wherever you may look there are vignettes of children playing the sorts of games that children played in the mid-16th Century.  In the top left of the picture beneath the arches of a building, are a group of girls whipping spinning tops with lengths of cord attached to the ends of sticks and they are doing this in order to keep them spinning just as long as possible. 

In the bottom left of the scene, there's a little girl holding up a spinning top — however, this kind of top had a different purpose. This type was designed to be held by its tip and spun through the torque provided by a sharp snap between thumb and forefinger, would spin only as long as this energy lasted, and would eventually slow down, wobble around the point of its spindle, and then topple on its side.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games - 1560 (detail)

Her spinning top is actually a gaming piece for a 'put-and-take' game — a 'teetotum'. It has four sides each of which would have been marked with a character and each of these was a command. Whichever facet of the cube was face up when spinning finally stopped and the top fell, then that character told what you must do next ...

By sheer good fortune, I once found such a top laying upon the Thames Foreshore which because of its form and the style of its engraved characters may indeed be of similar date to the Bruegel painting. It is made of ivory (stained a mahogany-brown colour during long burial) and each of its four faces is engraved with a single character ~ 

Excuse my mucky fingers! The brass teetotum cleaned up well despite its heavy encrustations. 

The teetotum is supposed to have originated in Ancient Rome (though I cannot find a picture of a surviving example) when the characters were the following and had these Latin meanings  ~

A. Accipe unum [take from the pool] 

D. Donato alium [add to the pool] 

N. Nihil [nothing] 

T. Totum [take the whole pool].

My post-medieval example with the characters A-H-N-P had similar meanings ~

A. Take all

H. Take half

N. Take nothing

P.  Put stake

There are later depictions of such tops and the example spinning around on the table in Chardin's 'Boy with a Top' 1738, also looks similar in style to the Thames example and is probably also a teetotum ...

Jean Siméon Chardin, Boy with a Spinning-Top or Child with a Teetotum — 1738 

It appears that the toy and its eponymous game enjoys periods when it becomes something of a craze. This was so during the 18th Century when 'teetotum' was a popular parlour game that had even the family of King George III hooked ...

Lord Mulgrave delivering important news to the King observed ~

“Their majesties were playing at teetotum for the enormous stake of some pins. His majesty received his lordship with his accustomed affability, and said, “You see I am at last turned gambler, but I hope I have too much sense to risk a crown upon the throw of a dice.”

As you can see, at this time there was a distinction between the teetotum, with which you might play for pins — and dice, with which you might play for hard cash. However, whilst playing a harmless game of chance with his wife and children the king freely admits that when 'playing at teetotum' — gambling is what it is and gambler is what he becomes — and quips that he only hopes that he'll never take the (political?) risk of losing his 'crown' by it. 

The Early 20th Century brass example found at Polly's Parlour last week is hexagonal and carries six commands ~

1. Take all

2. Take two

3. Put one

4. All put

5. Take one

6. Put two

The teetotum enjoyed another period of popularity during those times.  Although it appears that the device was still widely regarded then as a toy fit for children's play, in America, where the playing of 'put and take' again reached craze proportions, the teetotum was soon outlawed in many states and for good reason ... 

Soon, it was also deemed a fit tool for proper gambling — and of course, when that becomes the case, then cheats and swindlers will set to work. The picture below is of two gentlemen playing for what is clearly cash money. However, this picture also explains that the top could be ingeniously made to weight outcomes in one's favour, or indeed in another's disfavour with a crafty push or pull of the spindle ...  

And so I have a second teetotum in my collection and from a site that appears to have been a popular local venue in Edwardian times. Exactly what this place was popular for is unclear at the moment but the evidence continues to accumulate, however, I cannot seem to find any direct evidence of the presence of womenfolk. Unless I count the pair of toy deer as the evidence of girls at play then everything found at Polly's Parlour thus far shouts only 'men and boys' at play.

But playing at what and playing for what, exactly? 

Polly's Parlour — XP ADX150 & Garret Pro-Pointer AT Field Test (Part 2)

My testing of our new equipment continues, and I am thorough about these things. I have already passed the Garret Probe with flying colours because I can see nothing wrong with it, but only everything right about it. It's just bloody useful! It's really handy when the ground is wet when dividing clumps of soil by hand is just horribly filthy work. It's nice and loud. The beeping starts off slowly and gets faster and faster as you near the object until it is positively screaming at you, "here it is!". The side scanning is very useful for locating tiny objects that the tip cannot quite locate. What else? 

Well, it's industrial! Maybe even, indestructible ...

Cash well spent!

The XP is proving itself too. I hate wearing headphones but with this machine, you really have to because running on loud-speaker, it is just not loud enough if you're near any source of background noise. I guess this lack of volume would be OK out in the middle of nowhere, but Coventry is not that. The headphones supplied with the machine are comfortable lightweight ones that clip over the ear — but the lead is very thin and gets tangled up in the coiled wire running up the detector's stem from time to time. It does have a volume control though, and this is proving a good thing.

Also, that they don't mask out background sounds, and my being afraid of approaching bulls that approach unheard from the rear — I do like!

This was planned as a thorough 4-hour test session. I wanted to see what the machine could do right in the thick of the busiest part of the field which is polluted with iron. Actually, I didn't know quite how contaminated it was until I had found the first interesting item — an aluminium disc, that when covered in muck looked much like the many other pieces of modern aluminium trash that also pollute these fields. Only when I wiped it clean did I see a mass of numbers on the one side and some kind of design on the other. 

It took a while, but with a bit of extra elbow grease I saw that it was a calendar of some sort and what was really great about this item was that it dated the activity on this site very accurately indeed. 

To exactly 1902!

It's very rare to find anything quite as reliable for dating purposes as this because the object was valid for one year only and was neither of use nor ornament thereafter. Therefore, I conclude that it was chucked in the hay in celebration at the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve, 1902 — and at a party!

And I didn't even know that aluminium was 'invented' by this date. Well, you will learn something new each and every day ...

Somehow, I had inadvertently switched into 'all-metal' mode in the process of retrieving this find but carried on regardless just to see what would come of it. I was immediately swamped with signals, all of which I dug. Most were of iron objects, of course. However, many were not and the next find proper was a large piece of silver in the form of a very crumpled Victorian fob watch casing. This was stamped with neither maker's marks nor hallmarks upon the interior. Just plain plain it was. Which I thought odd ...

... cause it should have been!

On the first field test, I had asked the 150 to achieve a recovery rate of 30 non-ferrous targets per hour, scrap or good, and this was easily achieved. I had also asked if it would, 'achieve the expected outcomes of at least one shirt button, at least one coin, perhaps a toy and a surprise item too?' and it almost had, and in just an hour and 20 minutes before the session was finally rained off. 

Working with it today and within the busiest spot in the field it was soon clear that it would sail past the 30 per hour mark without any trouble. However this second test session was to be three-times the length of the first, and so it would be desirable for it to also locate at least a couple of coins, at least a couple of shirt buttons, a surprise item and certainly one toy. 

It had already provided the surprise find and in addition, one of precious metal (now added to the desirable outcomes list!) A little later it provided a branded shirt button too but unfortunately, I've discovered to my dismay that copper alloy items do not come up in good condition within the darker soil at the epicentre of activity, and this example was too rotten to decipher. Also, for some reason shirt buttons seem much rarer inside this area of business than they are outside ...

OK, the toy and the coins were left to go at. The coins came along at a steady rate and I wound up pocketing five in the four hours — the earliest was a very worn George II halfpenny and is the oldest coin from the the whole set of fields thus far — a penny, halfpenny and farthing of Victorian to Edwardian dates — and a tiny copper coin (probably European) that was pierced for suspension which carries a shield on one side and a crown on the other. It's in poor condition but I will be able to identify it, somehow.

There was also an early nineteenth-century military button of probably, The Prince of Wales' own 10th Light Dragoons. It's very slight in detail, but I will find it out because I do adore early military buttons! 

Between these items came other items of marginal interest value, but also came the now quite predictable finds of children's toys ...

The first of these was the most interesting find of the day. I think that many detectorists may have discarded this item as just another encrusted hexagonal nut from some piece of machinery, and at a glance, it really does look like such a thing. Without prior knowledge, I might well have consigned it to the scrap bucket too, but I knew better having already found an example (4-sided example) many years ago. Although the encrustation was really heavy and it obscured all detail below, I knew full well that there would be a command stamped upon each of the faces of this six-sided polygon.

These small brass items are known as, 'teetotums'. Spinning tops are what they are — but also they are gaming pieces and here at Polly's Parlour they were probably spun by small Edwardian boys playing against each other for nothing more costly than match sticks. However, they could also be used for more serious forms of hard-cash gambling and so the menfolk who certainly frequented this field may have used them here to fritter away the womenfolk's housekeeping money! 

(Come to think of it, where are these womenfolk? I have found very little here to suggest their presence thus far ...)

After I have carefully cleaned this item, when hopefully I'll reveal its secret messages, I will publish here both examples in my ownership, and explain their usage and long, long history. 

Shortly after this first toy another two more came along, or at least what remains of them. At some distance apart I found a man's arse and then a horses arse! Unfortunately, these were fragile hollow-cast toys and so they had broken apart in the soil. Nevermind, the rest of them will be down there somewhere and in time, no doubt, I'll find all the tiny, tiny fragments ... 

My arse will I! 

Find of the day — and absolutely not a hex nut!

In conclusion, despite never having bothered to use a probe before now, having used the Garret Pro-Pointer AT on two sessions I think it is now an essential item of my equipment. I really cannot fault it in any way and though it is pretty expensive, well, professional tools are never cheap, are they?

The XP ADX150 may be viewed as an 'entry-level detector' but really, it is clearly no such thing. By any standard, this is also a professional tool and appeal to me greatly because just as with the B1, you only need to learn how to set it up at whatever is optimum for the site, and just go. It is lightweight and the mounting of the control box behind the elbow provides counterbalance which makes the often gruelling task of swinging a coil about for many hours on end, almost effortless. This is an important consideration because detecting can cause long term joint problems of the wrist, elbow and shoulder should the balance be incorrect.

Also, I really like the way that the 150's stem collapses for storage and transport. Ergonomically, speaking it is ideal. In fact, I like the stem and the overall balance of the ADX150 so much that I am seriously considering upgrading my trusty old Laser B1 by buying a complete XP stem and mounting its control box and coil upon it! 

But is it an able detector? And will I be able to trust it in Judy's entry-level hands?

Well, as you can see from the recent finds that I've made with it and the scores that it has achieved — it is and I can.

Map Research — Old Plots and Crossed Paths

We have a couple of fields nearby that we'd searched just the once and briefly then, but which Judy had expressed an interest in searching again, and so, on Sunday afternoon we set out to give them both another try.

This session was just a couple of hours in length but it was enough to establish a few points ...

I had done a little map research by overlaying Victorian maps upon modern aerial photographs of the area. I then discovered a few points of interest that I felt would be worth exploring further. Firstly, that there used to be a building on a small plot of land which once lay at the junction of the boundaries of three fields and that these boundaries with their hedgerows and ditches were grubbed up at some time in the recent past and all three enclosures were incorporated into a single larger field.

Map of 1883. Our permission does not include the two rectangular fields immediately above the brickworks. 
The house plot mentioned is at top-right and the crossed paths at bottom-right.

Secondly, I found that a footpath once passed by the building, which turned left and then right and then met with a second footpath which crossed the first. So, we also had crossed paths to look at, which I thought might prove to be more interesting than a path alone.

On the modern aerial map, the house plot and the original field boundaries were all visible. Even the second footpath which seems to have never followed a field boundary has left a faint mark.

Judy set out just to get used to what is to her, a newfangled sport. I had the house plot uppermost in mind. I set out to detect my way there from the field entrance at top-left and along the way found a couple of 20th Century coins and a Late Georgian period drawer handle. 

Judy looking bedraggled in the constant drizzle — and the target seemed hard to locate

Judy also discovered something that pricked her interest. Nearby to where I knew the house plot to be she'd turned up an apparently blank copper coin disk. However, I could just see something in the way of faint detail and we both agreed that there was a head on one side. Under raking light back at home the obverse seemed to carry a cypher or monogram. I thought it had to be an eighteenth-century farthing token — and it was.

Henry Hickman's Birmingham token of 1792. Issued by Henry Hickman, a wholesale and retail dealer in sheet, bar and rod iron - at 3, Edgbaston Street, Birmingham.

A proper grot! But Judy is proud of it and I have never seen one before.

Eventually, the plot was located by scanning the field surface by eye and searching for a limited but fairly dense spread of brick rubble, tile fragments and shards of glass and pottery in dark-coloured soil — and it was what I'd hoped for. The evidence found showed that it probably was a domestic habitation site and not some other type of building because the spread of debris included lots of pottery and also Victorian period clay pipe stem and bowl fragments. 

Oddly, although this field supplied plenty of signals, the house plot itself did not seem to hold a great deal more in the way of metallic objects than the land surrounding it. This seemed somewhat unusual, but we will see what comes of it all in good time! 

Later we set off for the crossed paths but never quite made it that far. The field in which they lay seemed unusually quiet for one that had a visible spread of pottery upon it and well-coloured soil too. Clearly, it had seen periods of manuring in the past if even it hadn't seen much in the way of on-site activity. Either that or others had detected it to near extinction in the recent past ...

But if so, then why not the top field also?