'Best Iron Age' loot found

2008-11-20 21:07

London - An Iron Age gold collar worth more than £350 000 unearthed by an amateur in a field in Britain was described on Wednesday as the best find of its kind in 50 years.

"I was only in the field because a customer kept me late," said Maurice Richardson, a tree surgeon and metal detector enthusiast who found the collar near Newark, central England.

"Normally I'd never want to go into this field because a plane crashed there in the last war, and the whole place is littered with bits of metal," he told the Guardian newspaper.

The first beep from his detector led him to a piece of wartime scrap metal, but as he bent down to throw it away, his machine gave a louder signal.

Expecting to find a bigger chunk of fuselage, he instead discovered the 2 200-year-old collar.

"It's a fabulous thing, the best Iron Age find in 50 years," said JD Hill, head of the British Museum in London's Iron Age department.

"When I first saw a picture of it, I thought somebody was pulling my leg because it is so like the Sedgeford torc in our collection that it must have been made by the same hand.

"What is fascinating about it is that it turned up where no torc should be - to put it mildly, the Newark region is not known for major high-status Iron Age finds."

Richardson has received an undisclosed reward for finding the collar, which has now been acquired by the local museum in Newark, the Guardian reported.

- AFP