Eureka moment

 

My hamlet has existed for a minimum of 1000 years.  It is mentioned in the Norman Conquerors' Doomsday Book as having numerous farms, villeins, mills, mines, oxen and slaves etc and so I know for sure that it was thriving long before it was listed for taxation purposes.  What a sad thought - that people living here have been paying tax for a thousand years and we still have no drains or sewage other than that we provide for ourselves <sigh>

 

My 4 acre paddock which is the other side of my garden fence runs up to within 100 yards of the 13thC Church and buts onto the road leading to the Church, the parish Pound (where stray animals were impounded in olden times) and the parish pond and pump.  I think that's a pretty good reason for believing that people have walked and worked my land for centuries.

 

Yesterday afternoon found myself waving a metal detector, the hub toting a spade, the dog carrying her stick and 4 impertinently nosy ponies quartering the corner of the paddock nearest the Church.

We stomped up and down through horseshit until the air was a brown and distinctly pongy miasma.  Every so often I would go rigid with excitement as my skull was blasted by a piercing tone from the headphones and the hub would gird his loins and set to digging.  The very first hole went down, and down, and down some more until the spoil heap looked like he was digging a grave.  Yup, an old lead water pipe.  Followed as the afternoon went on by an old billhook, gate fittings, metal caps off probably poisonous agricultural cans and then one after another absolutely humungous shire horse shoes, the largest 11" across.

 

Then the battery went and I traipsed back to engage in a fruitless search for a replacement while hub and dog returned to the field of victory with a bin bag for the spoils.  Of course if the battery hadn't gone we'd have found buried Norman treasures, possibly Saxon brooches too, doubtless Elizabethan cape clasps, definitely something hugely valuable and historically exciting.

In fact, if it didn't look like there might be a spot or two of drizzle today I'd be out there right now.  There'd be no stopping me. 

 

Indiana Jones?  Ha, not a spot on me mate.