Today I’ll be going back to the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th of June 2016. Leanne had taken me to visit the farm of my very good friends in Nottinghamshire. I’d been fortunate enough to have visited I & S many times previously & had found lots of Georgian & Victorian coins...

..on this particular day, I decided to detect one of the fields closer to the farm buildings. I’d never been in this field before but within a few paces, I got a very solid coin signal. Sure enough, it was a coin from the reign of King George II. A fantastic start to the day...

..the rest of the morning was very quiet & there was an uncomfortable moment when after digging a target, I swung my *very sharp* spade up on to my shoulder & almost decapitated Leanne, who’d wandered a little too close to the wild detectorist in his natural habitat...

..now you’re probably expecting me to tell you that Leanne tore strips off me for this, but she didn’t. The look that she gave me was more scolding than anything she could have actually said. I almost adopted the foetal position & began sucking my thumb. Almost. But not quite

...suffice to say that I kept a close eye on where Leanne was standing from then on out & she probably gave me a wider berth than usual. There’s nothing like an almost accidental spousal decapitation to improve spatial awareness ...

...after we both had something to eat, Leanne went over to meet the calves. They made quite the impression on her, as you can see...

But this day wasn’t just memorable because I almost accidentally lopped off my wife’s bonce. Oh no. What was about to happen was something that I’ll never forget, even though at the time, I had no idea what I’d discovered...

At this point in time, I’d like to add that I’d only been detecting for 7 months & I was very much a novice. I make this point for two reasons. Firstly, I assumed that almost everything that was buried in the earth was the size of a coin. Please don’t ask me why ...

...secondly, I was still very much getting to grips with pinpointing the exact position of targets in the ground. This is important because unfortunately I caught the edge of the target with my spade. I admonished myself at the time, but it actually helped with its identification

..what I pulled from the earth was this. With 5 years of detecting experience behind me, I can tell instantly that this is old. Very old. But back then, I’m not ashamed to admit that I had no idea. A friend was the first to point out what it was..

..it’s actually a Bronze Age age head. A flat axe head to be precise. Little did I know when I took this photograph, that I was actually holding an axe head that was over 4,000 years old. Even now as I sit here typing this, the familiar goosebumps begin to appear along my arms...

..my finds liaison officer told me that as I’d accidentally exposed some of the bronze, they could use a machine to determine the exact content of the metal & by doing so, could accurately determine what period of the Bronze Age it was made. It was made between 2,350bc & 2,050bc

..Birmingham museum also kindly asked Pieta Greaves to conserve the axe head for me & to stabilise the potential bronze disease, which Pieta did. A huge thank you to both the museum & Pieta for that...

..And here is the axe head today. An amazing piece of history & a massive privilege to have been the one to discover it. It wouldn’t have been possible without my friends allowing me the opportunity to detect though, so the final & the biggest thanks to I & S. Thank you