Spur

This beautiful example of a spur was found by John Radford during a club search.
The find site, near Newark, had been involved in the Civil War siege.
The spur was awarded the Find of the Month for May, 2006.

Weil's Disease

On a recent Sunday an American woman took with her, on a short boat trip, some cans of Cola. She placed these in the boat’s refrigerator. On the Monday she was rushed ashore and into an Intensive Care Unit. Sadly on Wednesday she died, the post mortem revealed that she had died of Leptospirosis also called, Weil’s Disease, Pea Picker’s Disease and Infectious Jaundice

European Rat

Leptospires can be excreted by rodents and certain domesticated animals in their urine. The infection can live for several weeks in a moist state and an indeterminate time in dried urine. Infection is by contact with urine of infected animals or food and water that has been contaminated. Leptospires can enter the human body by the nose or eye. Although it is thought that they cannot penetrate through intact skin any small cut or abrasion gains them ready access. The death rate is about 30 percent of severely ill and jaundiced patients.

It is essential that the tops of drink cans and crown corked bottles be washed and, if possible, a glass be used to drink from. Apart from the risk from cans and bottles the metal detectorist is exposed to the disease just by being on a field and handling the soil and vegetation when digging. This risk can be minimised by wearing gloves whilst detecting and by using disposable anti-bacterial wipes before eating or drinking.

(Based on a Readers’ Letter, May, 2006 issue of Treasure Hunting Magazine)

Hide and Seek

From time to time metal detectorists are asked to find articles lost by farmers and members of the general public. Recently two such requests were made to the club. The first was to search a large garden of a bungalow being prepared for sale. The owner of the bungalow was suffering from dementia and had to go into a nursing home. Before going into the home she had told her son that she had buried coins in the garden but could not remember the exact location.

A search by Mark Attenborough and John Gough failed to find anything of interest but part of the garden, the most likely hiding place, for the coins was unsearchable. Set into the bungalow walls, under the front windows and just above ground level, were five large zinc alloy air grills making the detection of any metal within eighteen inches, other than the air grills, impossible.

The son was informed of this and decided that that he would use a spade to search the undetected areas, however it is not known if he has discovered anything.

The second request was from a farmer who allowed the club to detect on his land, he asked for a metal detector search to be made for a hypodermic syringe needle that had been lost when a vet had to put a horse down on his farm. Jeff Oscroft visited the farm with his detector but found on arrival that the needle had been found by a fingertip search. (Ouch!).

Searches like these, even if unsuccessful, can only be good for public relations and could be possible sources of new detecting land for the club.

Meet The Members

Norman's Seal

The full story of Norman Daynes finding the Warburton seal, as published in the June, 2006 issue of the Searcher magazine, can be read by clicking here.

Searching the Jurassic Coast by John Radford

So what does a detectorist do when on holiday? Well besides taking his or her detector and searching the beaches or maybe finding a farm to find the occasional gold Angel (sorry Barry!) I visited the early medieval port of Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast, which is the site of many finds of Dinosaur and other fossils. So I thought, well how about trying to find something a bit older than the usual hammered coin?

A short trip to the nearby seaside village of Charmouth which is all but a walk away from Lyme Regis and a visit to the Charmouth Fossils shop on the beach front near the car park gave me all the information I needed to know. They are very helpful and give guided two-hour fossil hunting expeditions along the shoreline below the cliffs of Charmouth at a cost of £7 for adults and £3 for children. You can also hire the “chipping hammers” from this shop for £3 plus a returnable deposit of £10. The “chipping hammers” are basically a hammer with a chisel point with which you break open the soft rock, hopefully to reveal a fossil inside. If you do find a fossil, they need to be carefully cleaned up and dressed in order to appreciate them at their best. The Fossil shop can do this for you.

Inside the shop are hundreds of fossils, some to buy and some on exhibit, one such fossil is the head part of an Icthyosaur, found at Charmouth Easter 2000. It has been given the name Mary, the head is around two metres long with huge eye sockets and a two great rows of teeth, I wouldn’t want to meet that on a dark night or anytime for that matter!

For those members who have access to the internet, visit charmouthfossils.co.uk and view the story of finding Mary which also gives many interesting photographs of the fossil. If you do not have a computer, many libraries now have free internet access for library users and have assistants who can show you how to go on. I think the photographs on the site are copyright, so to give you a clue, I have done a drawing of the Icthyosaur fossil head.

So, how did I get on I hear you ask. Where are all the fossils you found? Well I arrived too late for the guided walk so, armed with the information I needed I set out on my own in the hot sun to search for a fossil or two. It is a matter of experience of choosing the right rock to chip away at and if you look along the shore, you can see the rocks that have hammer marks on them made by other searchers. So following their lead is a good way of doing it (Looking for hammereds again!)

Among the fossils that may be found in the rock are ammonites, which have a ribbed spiral type shell and date back 240 million years ago, also the fossils of belemites, which are squid like creatures from over 190 million years ago are often found on the beach. They look a bit like long transparent bullets.

The type of rock in which the fossils are found are often surrounded by thick grey slate/clay like mud which does nothing to enhance the appearance of your sandals or your fresh clean white T shirt so I soon found that appropriate clothing is advisable. I quickly found that fossil hunting can be quite dangerous and the need to be very aware of cliff falls and being cut of by tides.

Having spent about an hour in the baking sun, searching what reminded me of a colliery pit tip which I used to play on when a lot younger, I found that there must be a knack to finding a discarded Dinosaur. All I had for my efforts was a small indistinct impression in a rock of an ammonite. Perhaps all the fossils had been found that day or were sitting in the shop. So I wandered back along the shore and concentrated on looking for the fossils of belemites amongst the pebbles. Here again, it seemed easier to find hen’s teeth and seeing that hens are supposed to be distantly related to dinosaurs then I suppose that’s what some of these fossils could well be!

I managed to find a small part of a belemite fossil so the day was not lost and all things considered, an enjoyable beach walk. Better fossils can be found on the beach after a storm, if you are interested. I think I’ll be sticking with metal detecting.

Icthyosaur Head

The Crimea, Sebastopol And Balaclava

On Monday, 3rd. of August, 2006, Richard Rutherford-Moore gave a talk to club members about the Crimean war and the siege of Sebastopol. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava was gone into in detail and many of the myths surrounding the battle were dispelled.

Richard is well qualified to talk about the subject, he is the military advisor to the Sharpe and the Hornblower television series. He has also conducted many groups on tours of the Crimea and other battle sites. This is the third talk Richard has given to our club, the other talks were about Robin Hood and Sharpe.

An enjoyable evening was had by all and it is hoped that in the near future Richard will again give us the benefit of his knowledge and expertise.

Finding a Patten

John Gough

A former member of the Ashfield club, who left through ill health, David Mattison was clearing the cellar of 43, Annesley Road, Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire, when he found what appeared to be the wooden sole of a shoe fastened to an iron ring. This was subsequently identified as a foot patten of a type thought to have been in use from the 17th. century to the early 1900s.

There are recorded instances of foot pattens and shoes being found under floorboards and behind fireplaces of old buildings being renovated or demolished. The reason for placing them there is not known, possibly when a house was built to bring good luck to its future occupants or to ward off some particular form of evil.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a foot patten as :-
“ A kind of overshoe or sandal worn to raise the ordinary shoes out of the mud or wet. Consisting since the 17th. century of a wooden sole secured to the foot by a leather loop passing over the instep and mounted on an oval ring, or similar device, by which the wearer is raised an inch or two from the ground ”

A far more romantic derivation, however, is associated with a story told by John Gay in his Trivia, or The Art Of Walking The Streets Of London. He describes how Martha or Patty, the daughter of a Lincolnshire farmer fell in love with the village blacksmith. To save her shoes and feet from getting wet, when she went to milk the cows, he invented a type of clog. This was a shoe mounted on an iron ring which he called Patty after his sweetheart.

“ The patten now supports each frugal dame,
which from the blue eyed patty takes its name ”.
“ Good housewifes safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread ”.
John Gay, Trivia, 1716.

Unfortunately there appears to be no substance to this story and more likely origins of the word Patten are :- French, PATIN (a high heeled shoe or skate) from the Greek PATAIN (to walk), or, possibly from PATTE (paw).

The desire to wear foot pattens in church by the clergy in 1390 would be to distance their feet from the cold stone floor of the church. In more modern times the same motive is described for Miss Branwell in the Bronte’s house, “ She almost always went about the house in pattens from her dread of catching cold, presumably from the flagstone floors ”.

Owing to the practice of depositing all manner of slops directly into the street in towns, it may be that the foot patten served another purpose as remarked on by Randle Holme in 1688, “ What a patten is, your gentlewomen will tell you, is a thing like a shoe sole with a strap above it to tie over the shoe, having an iron at the bottom to raise the wearer thereof from the dirt. By means whereof clean shoes may be preserved though they go in foul streets ”. Evidence that foot pattens were worn by the better off was given by Lady Newdigate in 1774 who when remarking on a visit to Buxton said, “ The way to the well was almost impassable. We have been forced to get high pattens and with them do exceedingly well ”.

In 1808 a Mr. Stedman invented a flat soled, hinged version of the patten however in 1842 the India rubber Goloshoe or Galosh was patented and this together with the improvement in road surfaces caused the demise of the foot patten. The road surface improvement was pioneered by John London McAdam, 1756 - 1836, who constructed road of crushed stone bound with gravel and raised to improve drainage. In more recent times the addition of tar to further bind the surface lead to the introduction to the English language of the word Tarmacadam to describe such a road surface. Various Acts of Parliament were passed for the paving of city roads, examples were London in 1762 and Northampton in 1778.

Until 1827 shoes were designed straight this was to enable them to be worn on either foot as the fancy took the wearer but after this date shoes that would fit only the right or the left foot had generally replaced the straight ones. An interesting entry in the Regimental Standing Orders of the Shropshire Light Infantry dated 1800 was, “ Soldiers will wear their boots on alternative feet on alternative days ” The foot patten found at Hucknall is for the right foot, this is evident due to the shaping of the wooden platform to fit the contours of that foot. This, the general design and the date of the house where it was found may place it to rather late in the history of the foot patten and possibly Victorian. By the 1850s the use of foot pattens had declined in towns, they were now square toed, flat soled and fastened by velvet, patterned or patent leather straps which matched the footwear. Although plain, iron ringed foot pattens were in use in country areas and on washing days until after the first world war.

I have been a metal detectorist for nearly thirty years and have only found four foot pattens, unfortunately none of these have been in the same superb condition as the one found by David Mattison. My finds were made during my early detecting years and were rings of well rusted iron with no traces of the wooden platform present. The use of fertilizer on the fields has hastened the decay of most metal objects in the soil, this together with ability of modern metal detectors to ignore the presence of ferrous metals will mean that fewer foot pattens will be recovered in the future.

The rectangular pattens give a larger area in contact with the ground, resulting in lower ground pressure. This effect is increased by the fancy wavy design, which puts even more metal in contact with the ground.

A patten being worn over a shoe showing the height the metal ring keeps the shoe away from the mud and dirt.

Countrywoman with shoes raised on pattens, entitled Debate Between Pride and Lowliness. 1640

Piety on Pattens

Two Foot Pattens Found On Ashfield Club Searches

Find Of The Month July 2006

Henry VII Half Groat

1498 - 1499

Canterbury Mint

John Radford

Jew's of Jaws Harp.                 Mary Severn

A Jew’s harp, Jaws harp or Jews trump is a small musical instrument made of brass or iron its frame having the shape of a lyre. A flexible strip of steel is attached to the larger end and is bent at a right angle at the other end. (The metal tongue is missing from the one above, this is usual with metal detector finds and caused by the steel rusting away).

Sound is produced by holding the frame between the teeth and tapping the bent end of the steel tongue with the finger. Variations of the tone and sound can be made by altering the size and shape of the mouth cavity.

Snap Time

Chatelaine

US Army Called In To Save

Blackbeard's Pirate Ship

The wreck was discovered in 1996 but recently it was realised that the ocean currents were stripping the protective layer of sand away and leaving it open to damage. As Mark Wilde–Ransling, the archaeologist in charge of the investigation of the shipwreck said,

The U S Army team will dredge sand from the sea bed and deposit it in the form of a massive sand dune six feet high and six hundred feet long alongside the wreck. It is intended that the sand will then be washed over the remains by the currents and preserve it until a full excavation can be made.

Blackbeard The Pirate

Although Blackbeard’s reign of terror only lasted two years he amassed tremendous amounts of treasure and booty. Most of this loot is thought to be hidden in the banks of creeks and rivers in North Carolina. False treasure maps exist to tempt the credulous into attempts to find these buried riches but, as yet, nothing has come to light.

Medieval Clasp 1270 - 1450