I Found a Hoard of 748 Roman and Iron Age Coins

I began history hunting when I was four years old, and it all started from watching Indiana Jones.
I used to go fossil hunting, searching my family’s farm for relics. Of course, the relics I found back then were mostly fossilized seashells or oddly shaped stones, but it was during that time that my passion for uncovering history was really forged.
I got my first metal detector when I was 12 years old from my grandma, and from then on, my love for history—and particularly Roman history—took hold.
We have a Roman road that runs right by our farm in Suffolk, and I used to detect along there. I would imagine Roman soldiers walking down that road, which made it feel like I was stepping into the past.
I work for my family’s butchery company, but metal detecting and history hunting has always been my true passion.
I found my first Roman coin when I was 16. It was a sestertius of Marcus Aurelius. Finding that coin was a magical moment.
I had found it near a pond, or more accurately, a type of spring, which is interesting because later I would discover that springs have a connection to many ancient Roman hoards, such as the Helmingham Hall hoard that I first discovered back in 2019.
That discovery of the Roman hoard at Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, England, has been one of the most wonderful journeys of my life. To think that I love Roman history and then to go on and find the largest hoard of its kind ever discovered in Britain is beyond magical.
The day before I found it, I was researching Roman roads and ancient trackways in Suffolk. I noticed a strange crop mark in the corner of a field. After a bit of research, I learned that it was near a field pond or spring, so I went there the next day.
The site at Helmingham is near the village of Ashbocking, where I live. I’d worked my way around this land because knowing there were Roman roads in the area had always attracted me.
Within 15 minutes, I found two Roman brooches. They were the clues telling me people had been walking there 2,000 years ago.
I moved a little further up the field and found my first coin: A denarius of Julius Caesar, dating from 46 to 47 BC.
I wiped off the clay and saw a picture of Caesar standing over vanquished Gauls. It sent a huge shockwave of adrenaline through my body, and I had goosebumps down my spine.
I couldn’t believe it. That coin alone would have been the find of a lifetime. I was tempted to go home and phone the landowner with the news, but instead I continued detecting at the same spot.
Then I found another coin, and another. Over the next few hours, I found 180 denarii.
I remember when I had about three or four denarii in my hand. I just held them out, looked at them, and then up to the sky. I realized that I’d actually achieved my childhood dream of finding a Roman hoard.
Back when I was 16, I had to do a photojournalism project, and we were tasked with creating the front page of a newspaper. The headline on mine was: 16-year-old boy discovers biggest Roman hoard ever.
All those years later, that headline had come true.
I called my dad, David, to tell him the news, and he couldn’t believe it. He even spent two nights camped out by the dig site to protect the hoard. I always say he’s the unsung hero of this story.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to uncover one of the most significant Roman hoards ever found.
The moment I realized I had found the actual hoard was unforgettable. The sun was starting to set, and after finding several coins, I got a strange signal from my metal detector.
It sounded odd—iron tones mixed with non-ferrous ones—and I was tempted to leave it, but I dug anyway. When I lifted the spade, I saw pottery sherds with coins stuck inside. That’s when I knew I had found where the hoard was buried.
It was Sunday evening. At home that night, I placed the coins on paper towels on our kitchen table, and a thought suddenly hit me.
These coins belonged to someone—possibly a high-ranking Roman soldier who came over during the invasion of Britain and who, for whatever reason, perhaps because they died, never came back to retrieve them. It was a humbling moment.
Another thought is that it might have been a communal burial of the coins by an Iron Age community, perhaps as an offering to the gods, or trying to ward off the Roman invaders. Why those coins were buried there is a wonderfully evocative question.
We contacted archaeologists first thing the next morning so they could begin the proper excavation, which took two days, and we went back with them to the site for that.
It actually took me three months to recover the bulk of the hoard from the site, which contained 748 gold and silver Roman and Iron Age coins in total.
I went back to the field after those two days of excavation by the archaeologists to methodically detect it, and in doing so I also found evidence of a previously unknown Roman settlement.
I found a Roman pestle perhaps used by a woman to grind charcoal to use as eyeliner. I found lots of sherds of Roman pottery, including fancy dinnerware.
One of the coins in the hoard was a gold aureus of Claudius, the very emperor who led the invasion of Britain. That connection made the find even more special. It’s heavy and a beautiful coin, and has been acquired by the museum in nearby Ipswich.
It would have been quite valuable at the time, the equivalent of us carrying around a coin or dollar bill worth hundreds today.
The earliest coin in the hoard dates to 206 BC, during the Roman Republic, and the latest is from the reign of Claudius, around 46-47 AD.
When I found the hoard, per the law, I declared it as treasure. Through the treasure process, museums are given the opportunity to buy the coins first, and they acquired 68 of them. The rest were turned back over to me and the landowner.
We put them to auction and they were given an original valuation of £75,000 ($100,000). But they actually went for just over £132,000 ($176,000). That just shows the level of interest in Roman history. The Roman Empire is a big topic at the moment.
I recently returned to the site for a podcast I’m producing with my friend, Paul. And while we were detecting I found a gold Iron Age coin.
It was a gold stater of Cunobelin, a king in pre-Roman Britain who died in 41 AD, just before the Roman conquest, and it has a lovely picture of a horse on the obverse, and a barley stalk on the reverse.
Even after all these years, I’m still discovering treasures at the site. It was an astonishing find. Gold comes out of the ground so pure and spectacular. The coin is hardly tarnished.
I don’t do metal detecting for the money, though. It’s never been about that. I do it because I love history and being able to touch items that haven’t been handled since the person lost or buried it hundreds or thousands of years ago. It’s like time travel.
Whoever lost that gold stater of Cunobelin, for example, lived during the conquest of Britain, a monumental time in history. To touch that coin again after 2,000 years was incredibly special.
I have found many beautiful objects during my detecting, including more Roman coins—such as one featuring Faustina the Younger, the wife of Marcus Aurelius; and another of Constantine the Great that featured a soldier spearing a fallen horseman.
But one of my favorite finds was a medieval seal matrix used to validate documents. I found it in an area behind our farmhouse with a lot of medieval pottery, suggesting someone was living there in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The seal matrix had a Latin inscription around the edge and a cross in the middle. After some research, we were able to discover the original owner: A Philip Govan, who may have lived on the land.
Archaeologists or finds officers will put these seals into hot wax to use them again and glean more information from the results. But it took me 16 years to pluck up the courage to do this with Philip Govan’s seal because I was so worried about damaging it.
Another type of seal I have found while detecting was a papal bulla, which would have come from the offices of the Vatican in Rome and been attached to a grant or document, authenticating it.
One of my favorite finds is a Roman signet ring found close to the Roman road on our farm. It has a turquoise gemstone known as an intaglio. When I removed the mud from its surface I saw a figure engraved in it, holding a club—a depiction of Hercules.
Who last wore it? We’ll never know. But it could well have been a Roman soldier walking along that very road that borders our farm. When I first put the ring on my little finger, a surge of adrenaline shot through me.
Close to where the Helmingham hoard was buried there was a well-known Roman site that has been detected for 30 years. I went to the landowner to see if I could do some detecting there, and I spoke to a farmworker who said we likely wouldn’t find anything.
But I wanted to give it a go and see. And I did find something: A Roman terret ring that was once part of a chariot, attached to the bridle. When I reported it, the archaeologist had never seen one that big before. It’s yet more evidence of Romans living in the area.
For me, that’s what it’s all about: To be able to add to historical knowledge.
You do have to know what you’re looking at, though. I found a beautiful Roman quern-stone—a grindstone for food like grain—wedged into a bank, which made me think a farmer had probably thought it was just a big stone and tossed it to the side.
To be a successful detectorist, you need to do the research so you can put together the clues that you find.
I’ll never stop detecting. Who knows what will come next? Perhaps an Anglo-Saxon hoard is in my future. We live close to Sutton Hoo and its famous ship burial.
All I know is that I’ll keep searching because every find brings me closer to history, and that’s why I do it.
George Ridgway is a detectorist and history hunter who discovered Britain’s largest early-Roman hoard. You can follow him on Instagram at @george.historyhunter and his podcast @TheLandRovers.
All views expressed are the author’s own.
As told to Shane Croucher.
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