I’ve just had a week-long visit from Tom Barber, one of my best and oldest friends. He was eager to give detecting a try, so on Sunday (May 26th), we went out with the Oxford Blues to a farm near Brize Norton. Some good Georgian coins came off the pasture, but we didn’t have much success. Tom found a coin depicting an early automobile. It turned out to be a De Dion-Bouton 6 H.P. (1903) coin from the Shell Historic Cars Collection, issued by Shell Garages circa 1970. He also found a 1970 10p coin, before the size change (which happened in 1992, I think).
(total time: 3.5 hours, though we split detector time for the most part).
The following Wednesday we tried a bit of Thames mudlarking. It was an overcast day, and we didn’t have much time on the river. We concentrated our efforts on the north side of the river near the Millenium Bridge. The site was rumoured to have numerous pipe stems and bowls, and we did find many of these. Tom also found a human bicuspid and animal teeth of various sizes. Another searcher told us that there had been slaughterhouses and chandlers congregated near the spot where the Walbrook entered the Thames (not far from where we were), which may account for the numerous teeth we discovered. We also met one of the real mudlarks, a member of the Society of Thames Mudlarks, who told me (politely) that I’d be ‘pulled by old Bill’ if I scraped on the north shore, which was eyes-only to all but the society.
After larking, eyes-only, for an hour and a half, we climbed off of the foreshore and attended A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the new Globe.
Exchequer of Words 