Two metal detecting friends have found a hoard of superb iron age gold jewellery after returning to a Staffordshire field where they previously found nothing and became so bored that they gave up the hobby and turned to fishing for 20 years.

The four iron age gold torcs – three collars and a bracelet-sized piece, including two made of twisted gold wire, two with trumpet shaped finials and one with beautiful Celtic ornament – are of international importance.

The pieces were made in present-day Germany or France, possibly in the third or fourth century BC and, according to Julia Farley of the British Museum, are some of the oldest examples of iron age gold, and of Celtic ornament, ever found in Britain. They could have arrived through trade or on the neck and arms of an extremely wealthy immigrant.

Stephen Dean, the principal archaeologist at Staffordshire county council, who led the excavation to recover every scrap of evidence after the men reported their find, described the hoard as “a find that could change everything that we know about northern Britain before the arrival of the Romans”.

The collars – christened the Leekfrith torcs, after the find site – were originally buried nested carefully together, but had been disturbed by being hit by a plough when Mark Hambleton and Joe Kania found them. Hambleton nervously kept the gold by his bed overnight until they could report the find.

The pair had been urged to give up fishing and return to their old detectorist hobby by Hambleton’s father Roy, who died recently, but not before seeing the treasure they discovered.

A year after they went out with metal detectors again, they were about to pack up after finding nothing of interest on a cold December afternoon. Then Kania called out that he thought he had something: “We both looked at it and were speechless,” Hambleton said. They searched further and found the three other pieces.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joe Kania and Mark Hambleton. Photograph: Staffordshire County Council

“We have found the odd Victorian coin but mostly it has just been junk,” Kania said, “so I couldn’t believe it when I picked out this mud-covered item and, on cleaning it off, I thought this might actually be gold.”

They reported their discovery to Teresa Gilmore, of Birmingham museum, one of the network of finds officers of the Portable Antiquities Scheme who record thousands of archaeological finds across the country every year that have been voluntarily reported by metal detectorists. Very occasionally they also record finds of treasure, which must be reported by law.

When the archaeologists descended on the field to follow up the discovery, as is common with deliberately buried hoards, no trace of a settlement or a grave was found. It was just a featureless Staffordshire field, like the one which, eight years ago, yielded one of the most spectacular finds of the last century, the Staffordshire hoard comprising thousands of pieces of Anglo-Saxon gold. Some of the pieces were found so close to the surface that grass was growing through the filigree metalwork.



Stuart Heath, owner of the 640 acre farm, who gave the two friends permission to search his fields and will now share the reward, said: “Mark has detected on our land before and it is amazing to think these gold pieces have been lying undiscovered since long before we farmed here.”

Torc finds are extremely rare, but another huge one – far too big for a collar and big enough, the experts considered, to go round the waist of a pregnant woman – was found last year in Cambridgeshire.



The Staffordshire torcs will be declared treasure at a coroner’s inquest on Tuesday and will then go before a specialist valuation committee to determine the reward, which will be shared between the landowner and the finders. An older Bronze Age torc, found four years ago in Northern Ireland, was valued at about £150,000.

Archaeologists and historians are still working on the Staffordshire hoard, more than 3,500 fragments of dazzling Anglo Saxon gold, the largest hoard of precious metal from the period ever found, discovered by amateur metal detectorist Terry Herbert on farmland in 2009.

A further 90 pieces were later discovered in the same field. Donations came from all over the world to help Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent museums jointly raise the £3.3m to acquire the gold and both museums created major new galleries to display it.

Staffordshire museums will also want to acquire the new gold but, at a time when local authority museums are facing relentless cuts, securing the Leekfrith torcs will demand a massive fundraising campaign.

