Thieves who looted coins from ancient Roman site handed Britain's first ASBO banning them from METAL DETECTING

Peter Cox and Darren West handed suspended sentences for theft

Caught digging up land on English Heritage site in Northamptonshire



Two thieves have become the first people in Britain to be handed ASBOs banning them from metal detecting.



Peter Cox and Darren West were given the unique punishment after they looted ancient coins from a Roman site belonging to English Heritage.



The pair were caught by police who raided their homes and found a haul of coins from the Iron Age, Roman and mediaeval periods worth hundred of pounds.



ASBO: Peter Cox, left, and Darren West, right, have been banned from using metal detectors

Ransack: A piece of land at Chester Farm in Northamptonshire which was dug up by the two thieves

Officers also discovered pottery, metal antiquities and maps of Chester Farm, the Roman settlement near Irchester in Northamptonshire which the thieves ransacked.



Cox, 69, and 51-year-old West were arrested in the summer when they were seen illegally digging trenches on the land.

When police searched their homes in towns near the historic site, they were able to match the tools they recovered to plaster casts of marks left in the soil.



Experts from the British Museum helped to analyse and date the recovered items, which have not been officially valued, and link them to the site.



Investigation: Police took casts of the marks made by Cox and West's tools at the historic site

Cox and West pleaded guilty to two counts of theft from a scheduled monument on December 19.



They were each given 52-week suspended sentences and were ordered to pay £750 costs and £750 compensation.



The thieves were also issued with ASBOs preventing them from using metal detecting equipment.



The coins they discovered at the site are similar to the massive haul of 50,000 Iron Age items found in Jersey last year, the largest hoard of Celtic coins ever unearthed.



Historic: Chester Farm was an important settlement throughout the Iron Age, Roman and mediaeval periods

TREASURE TROVE: HOW BRITAIN PRESERVES ITS HISTORY

Under the law of treasure trove, metal detectorists who find items of historic significance must report their discoveries to the authorities. An inquest is then held to determine if the items should be declared treasure, in which case they must be offered for sale to a museum so they can be preserved for the nation. The proceeds from the sale are then shared between the person who discovered the items and the owner of the land where they were found. Among the best-known items to have been declared treasure is the Staffordshire Hoard, a collection of 1,500 Anglo-Saxon items made from gold and other precious metals which was found in 2009.



Chester Farm is best known as a Roman town, showing evidence of houses, a cemetery and even a temple to the local Romano-Celtic gods.



It also contains remains of an earlier Iron Age settlement, and was later the site of a mediaeval village.



The area has frequently been the target of thieves in the past, and a 16th-century farmhouse on the site was attack by arsonists in 2010.



After the hearing, Mike Harlow, governance and legal director of English Heritage, said: 'The sentence sets an important watershed in the combat against illegal metal detecting and acknowledges its true impact on society.



'These are not people enjoying a hobby or professionals carrying out a careful study. They are thieves using metal detectors like a burglar uses a jemmy.



'The material they are stealing belongs to the landowner and the history they are stealing belongs to all of us.



'Once the artefacts are removed from the ground and sold, the valuable knowledge they contain is lost for ever.'



CPS East Midlands senior prosecutor Mark Holmes said: 'This case is the largest scale operation we have prosecuted for this type of crime.

