1. Buried Treasure

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Jouluna on aika muistaa rakkaitaan ja mesuomalaisessa kirjakaupassa ajattelemme lahjoja työksemme. Leydä Joulun merkityksellisimmät lahjat kaikki yhdestä paikasta, lahjoja ajatuksella. Mäin jatassa OP-pohjelasta moi, nyt te keskitätte tähän, eikä keskityttä tähän, siis keskittämiseen. Keskittäminen tekee boonusta. Osuuspankin omista ja asiakkaana voit valita, mihin OP-bonuksia sikäytät. Oletusvalintana ovat pankki ja vakuutuspalveluiden maksut. OP-pistefi kautta boonus. Vahinkovakuutukset tarjoaa pohjola vakuutus oi. Henkivakuutuksen tarjoaa OP-henkivakuutus oi. Oli seuraavaksi. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta, voidaan seuraavaksi ja seuraavaksi kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät ovat pankki ja vakuutuspalveluiden. Joulun merkityksellisimmät ovat pankki ja vakuutuspalveluiden merkityksellisimmät liikkoja. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikko vakuutuspalveluiden maksut. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. It was kind of on to his terms when he was going to give up his location. Thus Joulun merkityksellisimmät liikkoja kautta boonus. At this point, Holly isn't intrigued. Who is this guy? I thought, you know what, this guy seems like somebody who would talk. So I direct massaged him on his George Dennis Blackbeard Facebook. That's how she found herself chatting to Newport's most wanted. He said, "Holly, hello. I understand you've been reaching out as I was passed on a message. I have a simple, honest question. Can I trust you?" So what's his story? Holly had no idea back then, but it actually begins over a thousand years ago. Summer 878 AD, just before lunchtime. Anglo-Saxon England is being attacked by Viking marauders. A great heathen army is pillaging its way across the country, leaving land ravaged by raids. The smoke of burning villages rises into the sky. A lone Viking on horseback gallops through the medals. He knows time is running out. He reaches a quiet clearing, dismounts from his horse, plows his sword into the earth and starts to dig. Once the hole is about a foot deep, from inside his cloak he retrieves a sack cloth bag. He opens it and pulls out what's inside. One final look at his treasure. There, gleaming and twinkling in the midday sun is his life's wealth. Gold jewelry, silver ingots, hundreds of coins. The ill-gotten gains of his years as a fearsome warrior, fighting over land and seas. He knows this loot won't survive the battles that lie ahead. He has to hide it. He'll come back for it. Well, that's the plan. But as he covers his treasure beneath a blanket of fresh air, he hears something. He stops, wipes the doors from his brow and listens. The Saxons are coming. Okay, let's pause a sec. So basically, we're making this bit up. We don't know for sure who buried this treasure. Or why? He might not have wiped the sweat from his brow. Maybe he didn't have a horse. He might not even have been a Viking. Or a he. To be honest, there are times in this story when the truth gets a little bit muddy. But what we do know, for sure, is that back in the 9th century, somebody buried a box of treasure, and for whatever reason, they never came back for it. And it was then lost to history beneath the ground unseen and untouched for over a thousand years. Until... Fast forward to a perfect summer's morning in June 2015. A VW camper van trundles along a country lane, amongst the rolling green hills. North Harifiture is now about as peaceful as it gets, but chirping cows grazing, trees swaying gently in the breeze. To locals, the farmlands around King's Hall Hill are just another pretty stretch of the countryside on the border with Wales. Perfect for a peaceful walk. But for some people, the name King's Hall Hill evokes the prospect of past glories. Maybe these fields hold the promise of hidden secrets from the past. Just lying there under the service, waiting to be discovered. Inside the camper van are two seasoned treasure hunters on a trip from South Wales. In the passenger seat is our friend George Powell, aka George Blackbeard, the new port pirate. Who we've already met. Powell is in his mid-30s, a warehouse worker, stocky, with a dark beard and tattoos along his neck and arms. Sitting beside him is the driver, Layton Davis. In his mid-40s, Layton is the quiet of the two and works as a school caretaker from Pontopreeze. Two ordinary guys live in ordinary lives, but with a lifelong dream that one day they might strike gold. They've driven over an hour to get to the fields around King's Hall Hill, just north of the market town of Lempstone, Hertfordshire. For years, George and Layton have spent their weekends wandering through fields just like this one, metal detectors in hand. Most days they just find ring pools from discarded coke cans, shotgun casins or spare parts from tractors. They reckon this will probably be one of those days. Layton gets a text from his friend Sunday. "How's it going?" she asks. "Shit so far," he says. "And as a long morning, trips in through fields stretches into the afternoon. They're about to pack it in." And then suddenly, basically, this is the sound a detectorist lives for. It's like that first hug on the fishing line. It could be a great big waffle or just a moldy old boot. George kneels down and plunges his trowel into the soil. At this point, he's still thinking it's probably nothing. He's turned over soil like this thousands of times, and usually it is nothing. But he keeps digging, inch by inch. Layton comes over to help, and together they chip away in the dirt. Layered by layer, they scrape back time. Then suddenly, a third. George's shovel has hit something solid, his heart races. Dropping his trowel, he starts scraping the earth with his fingers. About two feet down suddenly, he sees it. A glimmer of gold. George reaches down and pulls out what looks like a gold bracelet shaped like a snake. And more treasure glints in the soil. A crystal orb wrapped in gold. A gold ring decorated with black markings. A silver ingot, nearly three inches long. And finally, nestled in a dense clump of earth is what appears to be coins. Lots of coins. Hundreds of ancient silver coins. George and Layton stay down at the ground. They're completely awestruck. Gently they begin to remove the horde from its shallow grave, which remained undisturbed for over a thousand years. But what can they put this precious treasure in to transport it? Luckily, they've come prepared. With a Tesco carrier bag. Not even a bag for life. Carefully, they lay the coins on top of the bag. And this is it. They've struck big. They're going to be rich, famous. Life is about to change forever. They don't know it yet. But they've just found one of the biggest hordes of buried treasure in British history. Well, we think they did. You see, we're piecing this story together from the evidence we have available. And the only people who know exactly what happened in that field on that day in 2015 are George Powell and Layton Davis. And they don't want to talk to us. Not only that, but they'll go on the record to claim that this horde never existed. So why would a pair of detectors want to hide the biggest find of their lives? You see, there was one small problem. Well, as we'll soon find out, there were quite a few small problems. And actually, there were quite a few big problems too. But the first problem facing them right now is that this isn't their field and they shouldn't be in it without the landowners permission. They do have permission to be in a field. Just not this one. They have the right permission for the wrong field. And that's going to take some sorting out. George and Layton are humble men of modest origins. And the man they need to be talking to is the local Lord of the Manor, Lord Cawley. Cawley's ancestors bequeath the stately home bound and haul to the national trust. But he still lives nearby and owns the surrounding lands. So George and Layton have a decision on their hands. Should they fess up and tell Lord Cawley about the treasure they found? Or keep it between themselves? Should they follow the letter of the law or choose a different path? What would you do? You see, we all know the foolproof moral guideline finders keepers, losers weepers. But it doesn't always stack up in court. Outrageous, but unfortunately true. To fully understand the conundrum facing George and Layton, we need to know a bit more about the wonderful world of metal detecting. And luckily, we have seasoned detectorists dig a door and to guide us. My name is Danship Chase, I go by the Monica of Digodon and I've been metal detecting for around about 11 years physically. Metal detecting has been something that's been in my mind for a long time. Dawn's curiosity about the history beneath our feet began when she was 13 years old and playing on a building site. You know, in the good old days before health and safety was invented. I was digging my foot in the mud and a little gold coin pops out of this mud. And I bent down, looked at it and I didn't know what it was because I'd never seen anything. It had a re-thrown, it said, "Oh my, it's a Roman, it must be, it's got a re-thrown." It said, "Run up to the library, start researching coins." And it was actually a George III gaming token from 1700. So after that, I always wondered what was under the ground. Just like that, Dawn was hooked, but something held her back from taking up the hobby. As a young girl, they didn't look like the type of people you go up to. You know, they were always like loners and a bit anoraki, can we say? So it was just a very niche hobby, which was male-dominated, I suppose. Today, there are roughly 40,000 metal detectors in England and Wales. And thanks to them, the anorak industry is thriving. Some are part-time hobbyists, others are die-hard history buffs. Many belong to clubs. They have meetings, show each other their finds and compare models of metal detectors. Well, for somebody that's never been metal-detecting, they usually have this impression that you're just going out finding gold coins and becoming rich. But, you know, really, the essence of metal-detecting for the majority of us is that it's almost like a meditation. You get out there in the fresh air, you're listening to the birds, you're taking all nature in, and you come home sort of tired but fully recharged if you could understand what I mean by that. And it just sets you up for the week, doing swears by the wellness benefits. I always go for a 10-year emote at the doctors, you know, just to check how I'm doing. And when I went to the doctors this time, everything could improve on me, if it was better, I mean blood counts were better, my cholesterol dropped, my heart rate dropped, everything was better. The only difference in those 10 years was metal-detecting because I've been metal-detecting 10 years. So that just shows how it can have a physical effect as well as mental effect. Most of the time, detectors dig up junk. If they're lucky, they'll find a rusty button or an old coin from the Victorian era. I don't know what to lie, can it? When you dig a hole, you get a nice signal. You do expect most of the time for it to be something not good. But when you do say that coin, and as you pull it out, your heart goes up, it's like winning the lottery. It's for me, anyway, I get so excited me, I have that much energy. I usually have to start doing a little bit of a dance in the mud. It's like a Beniole one really. It's just like moving around very fast. It's just a complete joyful experience. Don was a big fan of the BBC series Detectorists. Absolutely fantastic programme. And I think why we love it is because it is a real good caricature of what metal-detecting is actually like. You do have your little groups, that's my land, that's get off my land, you don't get that. That's my permission. You group meetings once a month. And it's a fantastic representation of what metal-detecting is like. I think that's why it's so popular, but I think the other thing with it as well. It's created a bit of a boom in people buying metal detectors and getting out there because they've watched it. These days detectors in the UK are uncovering more treasure than professional archaeologists. But as more historical artefacts are uncovered, tensions have grown. When I started ten years ago, there was quite a lot of animosity between the archaeologists and the metal detectors. It was mostly the archaeologists didn't like the metal detectors, didn't think that we were digging up things properly. Didn't think we were recording things properly. They spent years studying about they sat on the other and, you know, the white things away very carefully just to maintain every bit of history. And they probably looked at us with a big spade. But over the years, I have sensed a big change in that. And I can see that they're working more together now. And I don't think that animosity is quite the same as it was. You know, metal detectors have uncovered quite a lot of things. Whether archaeologists can then go in and develop the history further. Because at the end of the day, we're all love doing the same thing. We just do it in a different way. And one of us has got a qualification and one of us hasn't. To keep the detector a sin check, a whole load of rules and regulations have been introduced. And the heart of it all is the treasure act. Past in 1996, which requires that any item thought to be over 200 years old must be declared to a coroner within 14 days of its discovery. 14 days remember that. After you've declared it, the treasure officially belongs to the crown. So it's actually more like finders keepers as long as you're the actual king of England. It doesn't matter where you find things, whether it's in your garden, it's everything falls under the treasure act. Well, everything except coins, which are treated a bit differently. Basically, if you find one coin, well, that's yours to keep. If you want to go straight to your nearest arcade, that's your business. But two or more are official treasure. And that becomes quite important in our story. If you're lucky enough to find something that a museum wants to buy, then its value is usually split between whoever's founded and the landowner. So if you play by the rules, there's a pretty good chance for payout. And when I'm talking about pocket money, these payouts can be huge, sometimes hitting six or seven figures. I would say that the detecting community as a whole are a very, very conscientious group of people. They love history, they like doing the right thing. Every metal detector is dream. It's really to find a big hoard. I record it and let everybody know that you're founded. I mean, I've been doing 11 years and I still haven't found a gold coin. So George and Layton have a potential fortune in their hands. But they also have a big, naughty problem to resolve. One of the most important rules of metal to tack in is that detectors must have an agreement with the landowner before they start digging through their fields. And so George and Layton have a simple choice. Walk up to Corley's manor house, knock on the door and tell him what they found, or... Yeah, they obviously don't want to run her. On their drive home, back to Wales, Layton texts his partner and tells her they've struck big. But then he thinks better of it. And sends another one, saying don't tell anyone. Good thinking, Layton. Because sitting in the back of the van in an old Tesco carrier bag is a discovery that will change everything and not just for George and Layton, but for our understanding of the history of this land. You see, the coins in their bag will rewrite our past. So what exactly have they found? Back home in South Wales, Layton posts photos are three coins on online forum for metal detectors called Detect in Wales. He uses the alias Hammert because ancient coins were handmade and are known as Hammert coins. And also, maybe because Hammert is, well, get in Hammert. Fair play, Layton. He's hoping other detectors might offer some information and maybe he's posting to brag a bit too. But he has no idea about the attention this post is going to bring him. Meanwhile, George is also trying to get information about their big find. He reaches out to Paul Wells, a retired builder who reads coins to the pumping station, an antique symposium in Cardiff. Paul got a text out of the blue. It read, "Hi, it's George. I've got some coins. Can I come and show you?" Paul Wells tells George to come and see him in Cardiff with the coins. Paul also asked a business associate of his, a fellow antique dealer by the name of Jason Salem to join them. To George and Layton jump back in the van and head to Cardiff to shed some light on their treasure. Before men find a table in a cafe, and while Paul goes off to get the coffee, George and Layton spread about a dozen silver coins across the table. When Paul comes back and sees the coins laid out, he nearly drops his hobnop. It was as if they'd been put in the ground on the day they were minted, as if they'd never been used to buy a loaf or a pint of beer. I had a lens in my pocket, so I took a closer look. I thought they were medieval, maybe 11th or 12th century. Jason Salem, who knew more about the coins than I did, thought it was likely from the 7th or 8th century, though he'd need to confirm it. That's not Paul's real voice, by the way. That's the voice of an actor, but those are Paul's words. George and Layton tell them how they found the coins. When Paul and Jason ask if they had permission from the farmer, they say that they did. Then George brings out the showstopper. The three pieces of gold jewellery from the hoard. He has these thousand-year-old pieces wrapped in tissue paper. I was flabbergasted. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. They said both the coins and the jewellery were found on the same day. Paul and Jason warn the pair that they're in dangerous territory. This stuff must be declared. But George, George is a listener. He's distracted by the pound signs rattling through his head. Jason kept saying how important these items were, and George was becoming excitable and loud. Eventually, had to tell him, just go out and have a fag. You can see why George would be getting excited. They've literally struck gold. Would you want to think about having to share it with some landowner? George tells them he may as well cut the bangle in half. But these guys still don't really know what it is that they've found. Jason Salam offers to get the coins looked at by a friend, who's a specialist in medieval and early British coins. George and Leyton agree. And a few days later, Jason takes the coins to an expert he knows. And when this expert lifts one of the coins to the light, his eyes widen. He can just about make out the faint, ancient faces of two men etched into the metal. He's never seen a coin like this. He instantly knows that these coins are old, very old and exceptionally rare too. He tells Jason that the detectorists who found these coins needed to clear them as treasure immediately. This stuff needs to be in the museum. There's now a week to go before the deadline to clear the treasure. So Jason passes the coins to Paul, who plans to give them back to later. But when Leyton returns to the pumping station to collect the coins, he asks Paul for a favour. Would he mind holding on to five of the coins just for a couple of days, while they straighten out a small issue with a landowner? Paul agrees. A decision he'll come to massively regret. Meanwhile, a plan is forming. A plan that's a bit less lets hand the treasure over to a museum, and a bit more lets make as much money as possible. And George knows just the guy to help. Well, up there were seven coins, and let's say to look at these seven Anglo-Saxon coins of Paul, showed him the receipt. This is Simon Wicks, a man who knows about selling rare coins. And he's about to discover that these coins could make someone very, very rich. They were very excited, like, almost shaken excited. You know, because it was like seeing coins, like it was like a miracle really for them, and as much as it was for me, because I didn't really know their true value, until I actually took them in there. You know, when he was talking one coin might make 100,000 pounds or 50,000 for this one, and I thought, "Jesus, you know what I mean?" You know, I just thought, "It could be life-changing." So the new plan is basically, finders keepers, losers weepers. It's a plan that, well, let's face it, is the wrong plan, the worst possible plan. And it's this plan that will lead to George Dennis Blackbeard Power, torn to police on Facebook as they try to hunt him down. I said, "Hi, George, why are you on the run?" When South Wales Argus reporter Holly Morgan messaged George, she had no idea about any of this. He said, "Hello, Holly, I'm not running from anything. What I did wasn't a crime, because, as you know, no one reported it lost or stolen, being in the ground for 1500 years. I was lucky enough to find it and declare the items, but hearsay and the corruption sent me to prison, away from my children, my family and friends." This is the story of how to go from being the luckiest treasure hunters on earth to Newport's most wanted. This is Fools Gold. Fools Gold was narrated by Amy Fion Edwards. The contributors were Holly Morgan, Dawn Chip Chase and Simon Wicks. Sound designed by Peregrin Andrews, production coordinator Dan Marchini, additional research Holly Morgan, associate producer David James Smith, producer Aaron Keller, executive producer James Robinson. It was a BBC studio's audio production for BBC Sounds.