Well I have been back to the Not so New Fields recently and spent a couple of days on one field in particular. The reason! Simple really, I had not been on this one before.
The field had been a cereal crop and was now just stubble with large circular bales of straw. I, like many others find stubble hard going until it has rotted well. However the up side is with the bales still on the field I can use them as guides and markers to prevent too much close over detecting.
This field started to produce copper coinage from the late 1790's into the mid Victorian period, with a scattering of lead bag or bale seals and a couple of lead labour tokens or tallies. A couple of the tokens are similar with a cross and pellets on one side and blank of the reverse. Because I am not a lover of coins (although they are handy for dating the other finds nearby) I am always happy to see artefacts or parts thereof. The tokens are a type of coinage but are more borderline between the two.
Other fields on the same farm have given up some milled silver coinage of a similar period, but this one has yet to give me a 'silver' coin with the exception of this one.
Which I am glad to classify as an artefact. The coin has been completed worn or rubbed clear of any of the original features and in their place there has been letters and names . Mainly, Watkins which has been struck twice along with R.Law and G McD. On the reverse there are a few marks and letters but not as many. The size is approximately 24 mm in diameter and weight 3 grams. The edges are irregular and the coin /disc is thin. This suggests it may have been a William III sixpence although the size is too large, they were 21mm. It is too light to be a shilling unless alot of the coin was clipped away?
Another more interesting piece ( To me it is :)...) is a lump of lead.
Not much to look at but it just goes to prove that you must look at everything before you dis-guard it.
When you glance at it it appears to be just a lump of lead but when I cleaned the soil from it I noticed the following stamped into the back.
It is hard to see what the stamp is but at first it appears to be a shield with 3 lines/ fish /cannons /Seaxes. There is also what I thought was two cannon balls below.
So I applied a bit of flour and got the following details showing.
The 3 items now look like cannon or seaxes but the two cannon balls now look like letters. I blew out the flour and using a bit of floured blue tack got the following impression.
If I find out some more I shall add the details here.
Thanks for looking.
I cannot say why this was done but I like to imagine that is was done by someone trying to make a copy of a seal to use in a dishonest way!!! The story it could tell...If only!
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