Finding buried Treasure

Dreaming of finding gold in your garden? You might have to settle for daffodils.

- Charlotte Philcox.

Have you ever dug up anything unusual in your garden? If you have, just be careful who you tell, because the laws relating to ‘potential treasure’ are very strict, and you could face a prison sentence for not declaring anything which might be of value. That’s news which may come as a shock to most well-intentioned gardeners.

Like most people, I’ve daydreamed about unearthing a hoard of gold coins or Anglo Saxon jewellery on my plot. I’ve often found pretty bits of china, pipe stems and buttons, and even an old spoon, a threepenny bit and a key, but sadly never anything remotely valuable - although I have occasionally worried about discovering an unexploded bomb. This might be one of the reasons I prefer the ‘no dig’ approach.

When I was a child, I used to collect the bowls and stems of old clay pipes, which my father would often find when he was preparing the vegetable garden for a new crop. There was also a spot on the edge of a field near our house where these could be discovered, marking it as a place where farm workers of the past probably sat to have their lunch and a quick smoke. In fact, we eventually had so many pipe bowls, that my mother put them into two display frames, and hung them on the wall. Much to her horror, visitors would sometimes look at her a bit strangely, and ask reverently if they were a collection of ‘relics’.