Gone Medieval - Metal Detecting Medieval Treasure

Episode Date: November 13, 2021

When Buffy and husband Ian Bailey went out with their metal detectors in Yorkshire, they thought they'd stumbled across a sheep's ear tag when they picked up a signal something was in the ground. A little digging and it turned out to be a piece of medieval treasure buried on land once belonging to Richard III. Join Matt as he chats to Buffy and Ian about the fascinating history behind the curious artefact. Medieval finds like this are extremely rare, so is metal detecting worth it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. A stunning find made by two metal detectorists has hit the news over this last week. The tiny gold book has images of two saints on its open pages and a hole running all the way through it. So what might it be, who might it have belonged to? And how did it end up in the ground in Yorkshire? All these questions I'll be asking to Buffy and Ian

the lucky discoverers of this beautiful piece. Thank you very much for coming to share this exciting story with us. Oh, thank you for having us. Thank you. I mean, first off, I guess. Congratulations. It must be a metal detectorist dream to find something like this. Yes, it's certainly beyond anything that I ever expected to find.

I was just always very, very happy just to be metal detecting, finding bits of rubbish and all sorts. It's just being outside. And if you find anything historical, it's a... amazing but I would never have jumped to finding something. It's the Holy Grail of metal detecting. It is, yeah. Yes. No. The Holy Grail is the Holy Grail. Well, it should be the Ark of Covenant, really. That's a line from the detectorist. Are you interested in a particular period of history? Do you go looking for anything in particular or do you have quite a general interest? No, I have a general interest in all history. I mean, I wasn't really interested in history at school.

at all or throughout my life until I started metal detecting. And then for every piece you find that's distinguishable, that you can actually see what it is, especially if it's like a hammered coin or something, and you have the monoc on it and you can find out the date. And then you look it up and you find out all about them and their life. And it's just fascinating and everything that you find. And eventually it all kinds of joins up.

It's amazing. I'm interested in all of it. So each of these finds is like a little entry to a rabbit hole for you. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. Medieval finds really. They're my favourites, especially the coins. I was quite naive when I started metal detecting. I understood there was coinage around. It was quite obvious. But I didn't realize how they were made, how they were struck by hand. No, I didn't even know what a hammered coin was. And I saw, because we joined Facebook groups. And they were talking about hammies. Yeah. So I said, well, what's a hammie? And they said, oh, it's a hammered coin. Well, what's a hammered coin? You know, we really really. were quite green yeah very very green about the whole thing and how long ago did you start metal

detecting i started in the november three years ago yeah yeah so that was 2017 yeah and i started in the april 2018 and that's where we met we actually met metal detecting yeah that's fantastic so you're relative newbies to be finding massive important treasure as well yeah we do put in the hours though Yeah, we go at least once a week, every week, twice a week if we can, especially in the summer when you can stay out longer, it's easier. Yeah, yeah. Are there good times of year for metal detecting? Does it fit with the farming calendar and things like that?

Is it easier to detect in plowed fields? Yeah, the summer is the worst time to go because the earth is just so dry. It's really good to go in the cold weather, in the wet weather, you get much better signals that way, and it's easier to dig as well. And I always feel bad about every single hole that I dig. in the ground, whether it's going to disturb the soil and look bad afterwards. So we're really, really careful to put everything back as if we'd never be in there at all. And that's much easier to do in the winter.

It must be nice if you could get out in the nice weather, though, to do it. In the longer days and the nice warm sunshine, it must be frustrating that it's better in the cold and the wet. Yes. It's incredibly difficult to dig in the hot weather. It's hot for a start. You've got the flies. And it's just very, very difficult to put your spade down into the soil when it's dry. So what can you tell us about where you made this incredible find?

How did you come to be in that area doing some metal detecting? So what we do is, hang on. I don't think we should say all that. Yeah, we don't want to give our secret away. Okay, yeah, yeah, no problem at all. Trade secrets. We'll just cut to a bit where you've already told me all of this secretly so I can go out and find some really nice treasure

and nobody else will know. My brother lives in Ezingwald, which is in North Yorkshire, just south of York. And this particular permission, we decided to try and tie a weekend away and visit my brother. So we managed to find some accommodation. And then I rang around a few farmers

and we luckily came across this farmer called Patrick who he said, well, I've got crop on the field but there's a tiny little strip. And he said, you're more than welcome to. come along and spend your time. There was a strip where the crop had failed. It was only a tiny wean a little bit. It was maybe 150 metres long, 50 metres wide on a 45 acre field.

So we thought, well, you know, why not? You know, it's different metal detecting on historic ground. And when we arrived, it wasn't until we arrived. Then we knew where we were. We knew we were going to Sheriff Hutton, but we didn't really know the significance until we got, there. Sheriff Hutton was really important historically. And it's close to York. Yeah, it's close to York. But back in the early Middle Ages,

it was actually a bigger town than York itself. I think there were 7,000 inhabitants of Sheriff Hutton when I think there was only maybe 2,000 in York itself. So it was a very, very important place. We knew it had links to the Neville family and Warwick the Kingmaker and Richard the 3rd. and also King Stephen, there's a Saxon, Motten Bailey Castle on this farmland with medieval ridge and furrow fields. So we knew that the area was historically really important. So we spent some time there,

but we actually didn't find anything. I found it hammer coin. First time round. A Henry VIII sovereign penny, which is tiny. It was just in that little patch where the crop had failed. Yeah, but we're finding enough targets to really keep us interested, you know, some little bits of broken buckles and musket balls, which are always good to get.

And we just really inherently knew that there was going to be something. Yeah, yeah. There had to be something. Really good there. We just felt that it had to be. Yeah, and with the number of footpaths that were all coming together. Really, really old footpaths, ancient footpaths on ancient fields in a place with such history going back for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Yeah, and then we spent a couple of days there. We got on well with Patrick and his partner, Nathan. Tasha and we had a lovely time and off we went. And then a couple of weeks later, I got a text message from Pat and he said, if you're interested, I've just taken the whole crop off the fields. It's all been harvested. Why don't you come back and see if you can find something? So we did and take it over, Buffy. So we arrived, was it the very first day? Yeah, the very first day. Yeah, so we had a cup of tea. I don't even know. Did we have a cup of tea? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did, because we're ordering a new coil for the detector. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we hadn't had many finds over the last few weeks and we thought

we'd try a bigger coil. So we'd spent most of the journey organising this new big coil for the machine and that was ordered. So we're feeling quite positive about that. And as soon as we arrived, Pat came over and he said, oh, right, hi, you're going straight out. And we're like, yeah, yeah, definitely. And we'd been looking forward to this and we were really excited that the fact that the soil had been raked and everything that was in crop before was just completely flat. So yeah, that's a metal detectorist dream as well. So we headed out to where we'd been before. But so the field that was completely covered in crops was also completely raped. So we both said, oh, let's try that one first. So we went over there and Ian went to the back of the field and I stayed by the gate. I like

gateways. I think that, you know, so many people will go through that one spot. The chances of finding something are much higher than going into the middle of the field, I feel. But it's not necessarily true, but it's just what I feel. So I was there and then I found a hammer coin. Yeah, we think of James the first. Yeah. 1605. Oh, no, actually, just before this, I should mention, I had had a couple of phone calls as we were walking to the field. And it just made me really noise. You know those adverts that you get when people ring up and say, oh, have you been in an accident lately that wasn't your fault? But when you're all dressed up to go metal detecting, it's so annoying when you have to stop and answer the phone. You have to put your detector down,

put your spay down, take your gloves off, take your headphones off, and then find you at your phone and then answer it and it's an effort. It's just, it was really frustrating. All that effort for a call you didn't want anyway. Yeah. You don't want it anyway. And that happened twice on the really, really short walk to this field. And so I was quite annoyed by the time I got there. And so we just started. And I was just, come on, let's just get this done. Let's just start detecting. And yeah, I just found this coin almost immediately. And a message to end on the, did we have the walkie to-talkies? And I said, oh, how that heard? And he said, oh, God, I can't believe it. It's already. And then shortly after that, I found a tie pin, not very interesting. And I think it was

silver. I'm not sure. It was silver-coloured, anyway. It was there for about half an hour, and I was getting a bit fed up. I'm going to go back to where I found the hammer coin the previous time. So I went through the kissing gates, and at that point, through that gate, it's where some footpaths actually converge. Yeah, there's at least four footpaths. Yeah, they all come together in this one point. And I think also it's very close to the moat of the Motten Bailey as well. So it's just a busy, intersection, isn't it? Yeah, so I moved on to there, but because of all the footpaths, you get quite a lot of people

walking paths, and I don't know if you've seen that episode of detectorists where they're starting to detect, and there's walkers coming through the field, and every walker comes along and start talking to LAM. They say, hello, and he says, oh, hang on a minute, and he does that thing, you know, he has to put the detector down, put the spade down, take the headphones off and say, yes, and they say, detecting, are you? I was going to say, yes, you found anything? No, oh, good luck then. And then he puts it all back on and then somebody else comes along.

He has to do the same and just leave us alone. Well, anyway, so I saw these walkers and I thought, oh, that's exactly what's going to happen. And I've already taken all this stuff off twice to answer the phone. So as I saw this person coming towards me, I moved towards them and then turned my back to the footpath. So I didn't catch anybody's eye so I could just carry on with it. And as I did that, I took one foot onto the plowed field, and that's where I got the signal. That's that I immediately got the signal. Yeah, it was sort of six inches into the plough field.

Yeah, just one footstep into the ploughed field where all these footpaths came together. And I thought, oh, I'd dig it out. What is it? It was coming up as a 14 on the equinox. But I'd never found gold before, and I didn't really, you know, when I get a 14, normally, as you dig down, the numbers can change. So if it goes up to a 15, it could be a hammered coin, or it could be a sheep tag, or it could be a ringpole. 15 is a ring pull. Or the numbers can go down and it can be a bit of lead or just a bit of rubbish or a button or something.

But as I dug down, the numbers didn't change at all. So that was giving me quite a good indication. This could actually be something special. And Ian said that 14 is gold. So I was thinking, oh, maybe, maybe. So then I dug it up and I could just. see a glint of gold, but it's never anything that good. As a metal detectorist, your chances are finding something really truly amazing. I was so remote. It's hard even worth thinking about.

So I thought it was a sheep tag, which turns out, it looks gold when you take the soil off or a ring pool. They're normally gold as well. But as I rubbed it off, I could see that it wasn't either of those things, and it was in the shape of what looked like a little book. But I didn't have my glasses on. It's really hard to have your glasses on. and I have your headphones on because it presses against the ears on the arms of the glasses and it hurts after a while. So no glasses. I'm quite blind without my glasses. And I'm thinking, what is this? And I could fear it was quite heavy as well. And I thought, well, it looks gold. And I thought maybe it was something that had fallen off a charm bracelet or maybe something from

a gift shop from a castle or something. Or, you know, when you go to the Abbey gift shops and they did reproductions of things, I thought it was something like that. So I thought, oh, it looks pretty from what I can see. So I took a photo and sent to you. it to our friend, which is actually, it was a group messenger thing. So I sent it to Ian and one of our friends. And once I'd taken a photo of it and sent it, I could actually blow the picture up, you know, on my phone so I could see it properly and I could see what looked like these medieval people on both pages. And I thought, oh, that looks really special actually. That looks really, really nice. And I thought, but what is it? I've never seen anything like this before.

What is it if it's not a charm off a charm bracelet? So then I posted. it onto one of the really big Facebook metal detecting groups, which has got tens of thousands of people in it. I thought, somebody will be able to tell me what it is if I put it on there. Nobody did. And they were just saying, wow, that's amazing. And what is it? Wow, it's incredible. And that was the only comments I was getting. Nobody was saying, oh, yeah, I know what that is. It's a whatever. And so then I was starting to get a bit like, oh, well, maybe this is really, really special. And then I rang in, I don't normally, I'd normally run over to him, dancing up and dancing, or look what I found. But this time I couldn't, because I was shaking

so much with excitement. And he said, what? Because he'd already seen the photo. And I said, can you come over here and look at this? And you said, well, you'll come over to me. And I was like, no, I can't. I literally, I can't move. You'll have to come over. So then he started walking over in a really sulky fashion, didn't you? Yes. And then I started doing my gold dance, which is pretty much hammer coin and silver and gold doing this dance and he wouldn't even look at me he wouldn't even lift his head up and look at me and join in the dance or anything and then he just came over and took it off me and said what did you say you said this is really important really really important you said think I'd take this off you and you're never going to see it again I said no shut out shut out there's not

no no and he said just put it in your pocket and I said well I need to go back and have a cup of tea or sit down or something. I was just shaking so much. And Ian says, no way, I'm going back out detecting. So he refused to take me back to where we're staying so I could have a cup of tea. And I couldn't move. I was just standing there. And then I tried sitting down. That didn't help either. And yeah, eventually you came back, didn't you? After about an hour. After not finding anything. Was that an hour of desperately trying to find something better? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which he couldn't. Well, no, that's not true. I did find a medieval gold-on silver ring.

quite close. It's a potential treasure item also. It's not as good. But in that time, Ian had contacted our highest reason officer. Within 10 minutes of it being found. Yeah, it's the first thing we did. I'd send a photograph of it to an archaeological friend of ours called Dot Broughton and she messaged back almost immediately saying that is significant. And then, we contact, oh, because I put it on Facebook, we then had a phone call from Jules, Julian, who is the editor of the Treasure Hunting magazine. And he was so super excited, well over the top, and that just added to my excitement. And he's saying, oh, this is a...

Is that when you let yourself get a little bit excited thinking this might actually really be something? Yeah, because I just didn't believe it. I just didn't believe that I had actually found something as special as everybody was suggesting. and I'm still reluctant to actually let myself go and truly believe it. But he was saying, yeah, this is really, really important. And he's like, wow, wow, Buffy, I can't believe it. Wow. We were having a chat last night, actually,

because there was about an hour's window after it had been found where everything just accelerated exponentially, didn't it? And it was from when I looked at the image, I said, I think on the right-hand side is the graphic of, a medieval king and that's his archbishop on the left-hand side. Something like that. You know, and so I thought, you know, it's so tiny. Yeah, so, it's so small.

It was difficult to read, first of all. So I kind of knew it was medieval and knew it had some kind of monarch connotations to it. It's kind of crown. Because of the crown. And then within this hour, it went from that to becoming associated with the Middleham Jewel. And we couldn't quite remember the link. I think it jumped so quickly. So somebody did actually point out that the figure on the right was St Margaret of Antioch with her dragon, which I'd never heard of.

And then the suggestion was that it was St. Peter on the left with his keys to heaven. And when you looked at it, that did kind of make sense. So then we were looking up who St. Margaret was, and we found out that she was the patron saint of difficult childbirth and pregnancy. and found out all about her history too, that she was supposedly born in 300 AD and a Roman prefect had proposed to her but said, if you want to marry me, you've got to renounce your Christian beliefs and go back to being a pagan, but she refused to, and then she was put in a room and tortured.

And one of the tortures was being put in the room with the devil who appeared as a dragon. And then the dragon swallowed her, but because of her strong Christian beliefs she held up the cross that she was holding, and that either irritated the innards of the dragon, which then burst open and she emerged and harmed, or he just coughed her back up, depending on which story you want to go with, but it's not supposed to even exist in the first place. But then Joan of Arc, said that she was one of the voices she heard, and that's when she just rose to stardom in medieval ages,

because of Joan of Arc, so she heard a voice. So anyway, she became a venerated patron saint, Roman Catholics, in that time for childbirth and pregnancy. and then we couldn't work out why on the left-hand side was St Peter. Why did you have somebody with the keys to heaven? What did they have to do with childbirth and pregnancy? What did they have to do with each other? And then I was thinking, do I know somebody who's quite religious?

We have a Facebook friend, David, whose husband is a retired reverent. I hope I got that right. The Priory in Lancaster. Yeah. And so we sent him the photos and said, would you mind asking your husband if he has any idea what this is? But he's friends with a professor of medieval history at Oxford. So he sent that to him and he said, no, it's not St Peter.

It is St. Leonard. And St. Leonard is also a patron saint of childbirth and pregnancy. And I thought, now that makes sense. So now we've got the two patron saints of the same thing. And that's kind of where we came in with you because I think you mentioned they were two of the 39 venerated saint. of the Neville family. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb,

and in my podcast, not just the Tudors, we talk about everything, from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

I think when I checked through, when Richard III established his college at Middellum, they were amongst the saints that he ordered to be venerated, so they must have had currency in that region. You know, they must have meant something in that region, which would tie in with somebody who lived around there, having them engraved onto this item that they used,

and it obviously bearing some reference to childbearing or childbirth or that kind of thing. Did you find out anything about what you think it is, what the actual item is? It's got a hole that runs all the way through, it hasn't it down sort of the spine of the book effectively? So it was suggested that it might have been a page marker, So a piece of a leather thong would have passed through the hole that goes through the spine.

And then that may have been used in a Bible or whatever, you know, a book, a manuscript that the person was reading. And then it was suggested by the rich of the third society, I think, that it may have been part of a birthing girdle or a virgin's girdle. And we'd never heard of that either. So then we looked all of that up too. Oh, yeah. And a terminal bead on a rosary, possibly. Yeah. But it's difficult to tell, I guess, at this early stage, exactly what it might have been.

Yeah, yeah. We have been told that people within those times would not have ever owned gold. They weren't allowed to own gold, were they? Yeah, peasants, serfs weren't allowed to even touch gold. It was only the very noble and royal households that could have gold objects. So for somebody to have had this commission, to even have been able to be in that position where they could have gold, but then to have enough money to have an item like this commissioned in very pure gold,

there must have been high status. or even royalty that's been suggested to us. Yeah, so not just even rich enough to have been able to afford the gold to have it made, but noble enough, high enough up the elite of society to be allowed to have it. And it's just, it's the most stunning piece. I've never seen anything like it.

When we washed the soil off and held it into the sunlight, I've just, I've never seen, I mean, I've heard the expression, you know, or that glitters isn't gold, you know, so gold glitters, but not like this. It's just the most. most amazing piece of jewellery. When you hold it into the sunlight, it doesn't just sparkle. It's like you're looking at a diamond. There are rainbows that come off it. And I'd never seen that before. And I thought I was seeing things. So then we went to our goldsmith friend, Jonathan,

and I said this to him. And he said, what, you actually saw that? I said, yeah. And he said, that is an indication of its purity. He said he's only seen that once before in silver, very, very pure silver. So it must be, it must have cost an awful lot of money to have been made. And he said, Quite interestingly, gold will come out of the ground untarnished. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that's how it's gold. Yeah, yeah. It comes out the same as it goes into the ground, no matter how long it's been in the ground.

Yeah, so it doesn't rust or anything like that. So if you clean it up and it's gold, there's a fair chance it actually really is gold. Yeah, yeah. And it's heavy. Incredible. So what happens now, so this was a couple of months ago you found this. What is happening with it now? Does it need to be declared as treasure?

Does it go through a process? We contacted the fines liaison officer almost immediately. Yeah, I got a phone call into the Yorkshire Museum the morning after to declare it. And Emily, the fines liaison officer, phoned back a couple of days later after she received the photographs and was really, really excited. And you have 14 days to declare the find. So we were well within those 14 days.

And because of COVID, they've been quite reluctant to invite people into hand fines over. However, because of the significance of this find, they were quite keen for us to go straight over to York and hand it in. So I think that was about three weeks ago. It was three weeks after we'd made the fines that was probably five weeks ago. Was it? Gosh, it's that long? Yeah. Do we did everything we were supposed to do as soon as we were, you know, as soon as we got it, we started the process because we're very responsible detectors. We know the law, the Treasure Act, and everything that we're supposed to do when we did that.

Just, as I said, it's just so beautiful. I wanted to be able to share it with as many people as possible and thought of it being in a museum for the whole world to see. That's the detectorist dream, I think. So do you think the portable antiquity scheme and the Treasure Act is a good thing that works? I wonder whether some people would think the temptation might be to just slip it in your pocket. So many people have said to us and to me, especially on Facebook and on the internet, they've said, well, you must be mad, I'd have just kept that.

But what's the point in just keeping it? The thing is, it weighs five grams. So it's less than £200 worth of gold. So if you don't declare its history, if you were to steal that and try and sell it on the black market, you would not get anything for it. So they call it night hawking that can go without permission. onto farmland or any privately owned land and steal objects because that's what they're doing

and make money from it is so naive it's untrue. The most responsible thing to do is declare it. You'll benefit from it. If it goes into a museum, that's the first benefit that other people will be able to see it and other people will be able to share in the history, in our history, that it's been lost to the soil before you found it. So that's the most amazing thing,

that it's been found and being shed, but it belongs to the crown. You can't steal it. It's a criminal offence and you will go to jail if you try to do that. I would never be so selfish to do that. You do get a find-us fee, but that's not the main reason why we do this. You would never go into metal detecting

thinking you are going to make money because it's very, very unlikely to happen. Yeah, and we've never ever set out to think, oh, let's start metal-detecting because we might make some money out of it. No. That was never... You'll be disappointed if that's why you're doing method-detecting. We do it because we love the history.

We've actually got two other items going through the Tragedy Trogue process at the moment. Another one is a medieval gold brooch. And it looks like a curtain ring. So it's, you know, compared to the little gold Bible, it's very, very plain indeed. And is that one that Ian Van Buffy? Yeah, yeah, I did actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do make the better finds.

No. And when we get that back, we're actually going to give. it straight to the landowner and he's going to gift it to the church. The curtain ring. Yeah, the curtain ring. So I really don't understand people who really believe that they can make money out of metal detecting. It's just not going to happen. It's very, very rarely happens. You're extremely lucky. We feel very, very, very lucky this to have happened to us. But, I mean, the piece that we've found this little gold book, it's never been seen before. And people are saying, oh, it looks like a Pandora child. It does. It does. It does. It does. But it's the only thing,

as far as we know at the moment, until the academics look at it and confirm it, nobody else has ever seen anything like this from that time. Maybe modern days, yes, but not from that age. And Buffy was the first person to see that for 550 other years. Yeah, maybe more. Yeah, been lying in the ground and you were the first person to see it after it had been lost, which is amazing. That's an incredible thought. But I suppose as you say, the value of those things isn't in the gold that's in it anymore. The value is in the item that it is and the history that it has and the stories that it could tell. Yeah. People have been saying on the internet as well, there's all sorts of really, really lovely comments and contributions to it. And they're saying, you just cannot

understand, in this day and age, you cannot understand how important this piece must have been to the owner, that they've placed their life in praying to this item, possibly, to bring religious protection or magical protection, whichever way you want to look at it, to get them pregnant in the first place, which was so important as an aristocrat to have a child, well, most importantly, to have a son, and to survive childbirth, because 30 to 60 percent of women died in childbirth in those times, so they'd have been placing their life in their, well, the hands, figuratively speaking. of this little gold book. And I think it's drawn lots of comparisons

to the Middlem Jewel, which was found near Middlam Castle, sort of not too far away from Sheriff Hutton, and I've compared it to the Middlam jewel. It looks strikingly similar to me. And it does beg the question, how these two incredibly precious and valuable things that had religious significance as well as high monetary value,

how do they end up being lost? I mean, do you have any thoughts about... That's what we were saying. How careless are people? You know, were they purposely buried? to hide them or did they lose them? We just don't know. But what were people doing with their possessions,

throwing them around in fields? Yeah, it's quite incredible. Well, I've said, especially if they do have a connection, because obviously this are both areas that relate to, particularly the Neville family over this period. And as we've said, you know, gets into Richard III. And, you know, we can throw in Warwick, the Kingmaker and his wife Anne Beecham, you know,

the really famous Beecham Warwick family. So there are some significant people who it could relate to. And if these jewels are connected in any kind of way that they relate to the same family, it would seem like losing one of them would be careless, but to lose two of them would be downright disastrous and silly. So, I mean, I've wondered whether there was some significance to them being buried. If they relate to childbirth, is it an act of thanks or grief? Maybe if it didn't go either way.

Or were they buried when the Reformation sweeps north, you know, these things become dangerous potentially. but if they have some kind of sentimental value and significance to the person that they don't want to throw away, where they buried to be recovered potentially at some point later as part of that? Or even if it relates to the Neville family and Richard III, there's so much going on in the Wars of the Roses. Could it have been a moment of crisis for that family at some point in the second half of the 15th century up to the end of Bosworth, the Battle of Bosworth, a moment of crisis where they've gone out and buried their goods to keep them safe? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's what people did at the time, isn't it? Yeah, I did wonder if it was to do with the Reformation when Henry VIII came along and said, right, Roman Catholics, you are not allowed to practice anymore, and you're not allowed to pray to these idols and these things anymore. And so somebody may have gone out because it's so important to them, buried it, and so it wasn't found. You wonder whether they might have felt like this was all a flash in the pan, you know, this would come along and then it would go away. And I don't want to lose this precious thing to me that has lots of monetary value, but has, religious significance and perhaps if it was a charm that worked, they wanted to keep it. And they thought, you know, when this all blows over, I can go and get it back. I don't want it to be melted down or repurposed or whatever else.

So perhaps they thought this would all blow over, you know, not realizing that it'd be 500-odd years before Buffy would come along and pull it out of the ground again. Yeah, it really is going down a wormhole and you get completely lost in your imagination of what was going on. Well, we do know that it was all ancient forest in that area. Remember the name of the forest? So somebody may have been walking along the forest line, in the dark, dropped it. There's no lights that you can't have to put out your pockets. There's no street lights. There's no torches.

You can't get your smartphone out. No. So it may have been that or like you say, burying it for safety. Yeah, deliberately buried or, yeah, yeah. Because it would be incredibly careless to lose such important items like that. That have similar purposes as well. You know, the Middleham Jewel strongly relates to sort of childbirth and protection and things like that. So two items that have the same kind of purpose for the owner to have been lost relatively close to each other is quite odd and striking, I think, if they were just accidentally lost and dropped.

So what happens now? What's the process? Do we have a coroner's inquiry into the treasure and what happens to it then? We handed it into the Yorkshire Museum where we were told that the academics were very excited to look at it and they would zap it and they would x-ray it and. poke and prod it and decide what it was. And that could be a quick process because it would fast-tracked because everyone's so excited by it. Or the sheer volume of people that want to look at it could extend it. It could take two years. It could take longer. We don't know how long it's going to take.

But they will make their decision, what they think it is. And then from there it goes in front of a panel. Yeah, to be valued. And then it'll be offered to a museum. for purchase and we hope the Yorkshire Museum will take it. We hope that it will go with the Midland jewel. Yeah, if the association it is right. Yeah, yeah.

All the museums are open to bid on it, aren't they? Yeah, yeah. And if nobody can afford it or they decide they don't want it, then it gets returned. Yeah. And then it can be sole private. That would be the worst case scenario because we really want people to be able to see it. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

I mean, you must just be in a case. complete days at the moment with all of this going on. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Still, I, well, I don't know about you, Ian, but I'm still struggling to actually believe it is as important as everyone says it is, even though we've done all the research and it all points to that. It's just too wild, isn't it? Because I just never expected this to happen, like it said in the start, and now it may possibly have happened. I find it difficult to accept. I think what I'm going to take away then is we need competitive metal detecting that gets Ian into a bad mood. And your best metal detecting is done in gateways when you're angry.

Yes. Yes. I'm the kind of team manager. I organise everything. It does. I secure all the permissions. I book everything. It makes the sandwiches.

I lead to the van to make sure she doesn't get lost. Yeah, it's true. Take her there and then she finds all the good stuff. Yeah. He does all the driving as well. That's teamwork though, isn't it? Yeah, no, yeah. It's a great pleasure.

Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, and I hope Dave the dog is coping with the fireworks that have been going on a bit for you as well. It's gone nice and quiet now, fantastic. Well, thank you so much. I mean, it's so exciting to think what we might discover about this wonderful artefact over the coming months and years

and hopefully we'll all be able to go and visit it in a museum at some point very soon. I do also quite like the Little Wars of the Roses reference to Lancashire people heading off into Yorkshire to go treasure hunting. That appeals to my Wars of the Rose's interest. Join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. And don't forget to subscribe to Gone Medieval, wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. While I've got you, I would like to recommend an episode of Not Just the Tudors, also from History Hit.

It's entitled The Ottoman Renaissance. And it's a fascinating discussion of something that I studied at school, the Ottoman Empire, but which doesn't get as much attention as maybe it should. Susanna Lipscomb sets about putting that right in this episode. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hit.