Our Mexican Orange Blossom graced us with late summer blossoms. (Choisya ternata)

Care package from the windy city!

To be honest, this item stayed in my collection for a long time before I finally brought it in to the Finds Liaison Officer. To my untrained eye, it looked a lot like a simple loop from a modern ho…

The mothership checked in on me but I told them I was good for a few more trips around the sun. :)

In a previous entry, I mentioned how easy it is to mistake small metal hooks for horse harness fittings. But this next recovery leaves no room for guesswork: a medieval enamel-inlaid harness pendan…

Rights Holder: The Portable Antiquities Scheme The Riverside Discovery I decided to branch out from my usual fields and head toward the River Test, near the old Horsebridge station. The area is stu…

This find represents a pivotal moment in the modernisation of Britain’s economy, charting the difficult transition from ancient methods to modern, standardised finance. I discovered this remarkable…

Part of a Birthday theme…

It really is amazing how a simple piece of lead pulled out of a muddy field can instantly connect our modern, everyday routines—like standing on a clinic scale—straight back through the Roman Empire to Archimedes, the father of modern physics. Every time I go to the doctor's office for a checkup, I'm weighed and while waiting for the cantilevering to stop I think about the mechanics of the scale they use.

Thinking about the area around St John’s Church brought to mind a recurring type of find from my early days of detecting. I once had permission to search a tiny field barely a stone's throw from the back of the church itself. Back then, my first detector wasn't all that sophisticated, meaning big, chunky iron targets were hard to miss—and among those early recoveries from that little patch of ground were several oval iron rings.

Our tiny little pickle plant has flowered!

When I documented a medieval clasp in a previous entry, I made a brief passing reference to another favourite piece from my collection—a post-medieval hooked strap fitting. Measuring 44mm long and weighing just under seven grams, this copper-alloy piece (logged under PAS reference WILT-336B57) dates from between AD 1550 and 1700, spanning the dramatic Tudor and Stuart eras. I found this item in the very same West Grimstead field that yielded a rich assortment of Tudor and Stuart discoveries—a dress fastener, bag seal, star pendant, leather palm guard, lead beads, and a lead cloth seal originating all the way from Augsburg, Germany.

The fake palm continues to flower, but I'm not sure this is officially flowered.

Nothing like picking and eating a piece of fruit you grew yourself.

Finally got a fig to ripen without the bugs and slugs getting it first!!

In my last entry, we looked at how early modern metalworkers used clever “modular” casting tricks to customise their wares, drawing a comparison to the famous Apostle spoons of the Tudor and Stuart eras. Reading back over those paragraphs, I realised I hadn’t yet documented one of my earliest and absolute favourite local finds—an actual Apostle spoon! It is a beautiful piece of tableware with a fascinating story to tell, but it hides a cheeky little manufacturing secret that perfectly highlights the line between an ancient relic and a clever Victorian replica.

The weeks-long heatwave barely gave us a break, but it did pause to take a humid breath, so of course I was out in the afternoon glare trying to get in a few minutes detecting before the promise of shade and supper called me back home. Just when I thought trudging across the baked soil, on a hillside no less, was not the best way to spend my day, I found something that left me standing in the middle of a hot pasture scratching my head in absolute bewilderment.

I thought this was our Rosemary blooming. Which it's never done. But it's not rosemary, but probably Pink Tickseed, often sold under the cultivar name 'American Dream'. Either way it's doing pretty good in all this heat.

Which book have you read more than any other? The Martian Chronicles

My bonsai pot has a little visitor!

We’re a long way from the Jurassic coast…

I made this presentation piece for JJ to display in her bathroom. It is a pyracantha in a lucky cat pot I 3D printed. I also printed the stand. It is a bit over a foot tall and though the white flowers have come and gone it has lots of small berries that will turn a brilliant red in the fall.