Saxon Treasure Hoard Found

The amazing, new find was made in Staffordshire, where archaeologists discovered the largest such pile of gold in the entire United Kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon hoard features approximately 1,500 pieces of silver and gold, and is estimated to be around 1,300 years old. Experts say that more than a year will most likely go by until the find is officially evaluated. Because South Staffordshire Coroner Andrew Haigh declared the find a treasure, it now officially belongs to the Crown, which means that the monarchy will claim it, the BBC News reports.

The find was made by a Burntwood, Staffordshire resident, 55-year-old Terry Herbert, who was scanning the ground using a metal detector, a very common practice in looking for buried artifacts across the United Kigdom. The find “was what metal detectorists dream of,” he told the news agency in an interview, adding that the discovery was made on an average farmland. The newly found Staffordshire Hoard features, at first glance, about five kilograms of gold and 2.5 kilograms of silver, authorities report.

The find exceeds by far the Sutton Hoo discovery, made in 1939, which unveiled some 1.5 kilograms of gold near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England. “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. [It is] absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells,” the former British Museum Department of Prehistory and Europe keeper, Leslie Webster, said. The latter two documents are 8th- and 9th-century manuscripts of the four New Testament Gospels.

“I have this phrase that I say sometimes; 'spirits of yesteryear take me where the coins appear,' but on that day I changed coins to gold. I don't know why I said it that day but I think somebody was listening and directed me to it. This is what metal detectorists dream of, finding stuff like this. But the vast amount there is is just unbelievable,” Herbert shared. The British Museum will be in charge of evaluating the treasure, and some money will be given to Herbert, as well as to the owner of the farmland where the discovery was made.

“Nothing could have prepared me for that. I saw boxes full of gold, items exhibiting the very finest Anglo-Saxon workmanship. This is absolutely phenomenal. It is a hugely important find – the most important one that I have dealt with, but this has got to rank as one of the biggest in the country,” the find's liaison officer for Staffordshire, Duncan Slarke, who has been the first authority to see the hoard, added.