Local historian Andy Bassett talks to the Shropshire Star about his success as a metal detectorist and some of the amazing items he has discovered.
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00:00So can I say, who are you? Andy Bassett. Hi Andy, where are we? We're somewhere in
00:06Shropshire but we're at Seven Valley Alpacas. Brilliant. It's our alpaca
00:09therapy farm. And that's the basis of your living, that's what you
00:13make a living at? Trying to, we're developing a farm, you know, and we try.
00:18But in your spare time you're a very successful detectorist. Yeah, thank you
00:23for that. Yes, ever since I was a child, I was 10, my dad bought me a metal
00:27detector for a holiday, and the first thing I found was a Charles the First
00:31hammered shilling coin and some Roman coins. And ever since then, on and off,
00:35while my children were growing up, but that's my whole being pastime. Yeah, and it's
00:40hooked you ever since. Yeah, and you know, amateur historian, you know, grew up with
00:45Time Team. I'm now a British Museum volunteer worker, so supporting various
00:50ways with that recording of finds. You've had a project in Wotton to locate
00:56various items. Oh, it's been an amazing journey. Yes, a customer of ours here, a
01:01friend lost a wedding ring in a garden at a party, asked me if I could help finding
01:05it. I went up there and found it, but along with the wedding ring, I found a
01:082,000 year old Roman brooch in a garden. And then the neighbours found out about
01:12it, and I've done a few more gardens. And then in one of someone's garden, I've
01:17found a hoard called the Wotton Brook hoard, which is a Charles the First Civil War hoard.
01:22Fantastic, so we can go and talk about the Charles the First. Perhaps if you go
01:26a little through history of what you found. So the earliest things that you
01:29found here are to do with the Romans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What kind of items have
01:34you found here? Yeah, so the earliest thing that I found, like I said, while I was
01:40discovering the lost ring in the garden, was what we call Polden Hill brooch. So
01:45it's a Roman fibula brooch, and it dates from the first century, and it resembles
01:50the shape of a dolphin, and they was made at Polden Hill. There was a few
01:55found there, so they're called Polden Hill brooch. It's very distinctive, and they
01:58look like a dolphin, and they were used to keep the Romans toga up, one on each
02:02side of their toga. Yeah, and this whole load of your finds in Wotton, they
02:11cover, you've got boxes and boxes of the stuff. Yes I have, yeah. And it can really
02:15tell the history of a place through time. Yeah, it's been an amazing journey. So it
02:21was evident after I started finding a few things, I'd done a talk in Wotton
02:27about 18 months ago, just on local history, things I found locally. But then
02:31because of what we're finding in Wotton, it's developed into I'm doing a talk on the 6th
02:35of September in Wotton, about the history of Wotton, that's been created by what
02:39we've found, with the help of all the landowners. Fantastic, and you can even
02:42tell where there are gaps, where the population was devastated by the Black
02:48Death, for example. Absolutely. No finds in a certain period. No, no, that's absolutely
02:52true. So along the timeline of history, we've discovered, if you like, an
02:57Edward I silver penny from 1301, and then the next coinage we got is some
03:02later coins of Henry V, so around about 1450. So we can tell the Black
03:07Death coming, and from that period of like 1340 to about 1470. So Edward I
03:16of course was known as the Edward Longshanks. Edward Longshanks, yes, son of
03:20Henry III, okay, and I'm fortunate to find one of his hoards as well, so I
03:25spent a lot of time studying the history of that. I mean some metal
03:29detectorists go through years without finding anything, but you've
03:34had an amazing number of hoard finds and item finds, as well as the historical
03:40items. Yeah, some amazing finds. The machine's a great machine, I use a
03:44machine called a Dodeus, and all it simply does is it gives me signals for
03:47metal, but it also gives me signals for minerals or habitation areas. And the
03:52Charles I coins that we mentioned, you have a few from that era
03:57where Charles I was actually imprisoned and waiting execution. Yes, so
04:02in Wotton, this discovery of the hoard, the Wotton Brook hoard, is Charles I's
04:07Civil War hoard, so the people would have been hoarding their silver because the
04:12Royalist troops were going around the houses taking the silver away to fund
04:15the war effort. And some of the coins, yeah, they're all in that period of sort
04:19of 1629 to 1644, which is when he was in prison. Yeah, so tell us more about
04:25where people can hear you talk. Yeah, so they can reach out, I do talks to all
04:33community groups, Communities Institute, tractors, clubs, young people clubs, I've
04:38done talks for schools and give presentation boxes for schools to engage
04:42the children because they can physically handle the finds. It means a lot more to
04:46young people and to community groups. I can talk about a hoard, but because some
04:51of them have been disclaimed through the Treasure Act, I physically got them and
04:54they come out of storage and then we take them to do a talk. Is it made
04:58contact with you through Seven Valley Alpacas? Yeah, through Seven Valley Alpacas,
05:02which is available online, sevenvalleyalpacas.com, and then yeah, I'm
05:06more than happy, I give community group talks and for a fee just to cover
05:12expenses, which actually ends up as alpaca food. Andy, thanks very much for
05:16the coffee and the view over the valley. Yeah, you know, it's great and thank you
05:20very much and just emphasize it's just as important the landowners, they give me
05:25permission to look on the land and it enlightens their history as well to
05:29know that these objects are in their property and their gardens. Fantastic,
05:32thanks very much. Thank you.