My Favourite Finds The Early Years 'Eyes Only'

This series will show what I consider to be my favourite finds from over 60 years of searching, plus a few locally made finds found by other people that are also favourites of mine.

In fact, the first two come under that heading – they were found on land adjoining a field that was to turn out to be a regular searching ground for me for many years to come: the ‘Roman field’, right here in Lakenheath. They were unearthed back in the late 1940s when local archaeologist, Lady Briscoe, was carrying out excavations on part of her husband’s estate.

The first of these finds is in the form of a very rare and perfectly preserved bronze repousse type brooch (Fig.1) showing a gladiator fighting a lion; this unique brooch was eventually acquired by Ipswich Museum. The second find from the same excavation is a bronze hanging incense burner (Fig.2) – after 63 years of searching it’s still the only example of one dating from the Roman period that I’ve seen.

The first of my own favourite finds came to light in the summer of 1954 when I was a few months short of my 10th birthday. By this time, I had already started what was to turn out to be 19 years of continuous ‘eyes-only’ field walking. One Sunday morning, Lady Briscoe stopped at my parents’ house to ask me if I was interested in going with her to investigate an amazing find that had turned up on a field in the nearby village of Hockwold in Norfolk. It had been unearthed following ploughing of a field that was believed to be the site of a Romano-British temple. Well, I didn’t need asking twice, and ten minutes later we were walking over the freshly ploughed field to an area where a small square excavation had already been dug out.