Interviewer
What got you first interested in metal detecting?
Peter Dawson
I’d always had this interest in really local history, particularly the village. And then in the 1970s this new invention came out, the metal detector, and I and a few friends took it up took it up actually through the emerge of the Caster (?) bypass, when archaeologists first invited us to have a look at the stuff there because they couldn’t cover the whole bypass. And it grew from there.
Interviewer
So do you remember what your first or earliest finds was?
Peter Dawson
The first thing I found wasn’t really metal at all, it was a small fragment of what turned out to be, I didn’t know at the time, a Saxon burial urn.So out I went and within a few weeks found my best and proudest find, which it a Saxon broach dating to 600AD. Feel that, more than 1600 years old, would have come off a lady’s cloak, probably a burial item. Bronze, not very tarnished or worn, with the original rusty pin rusted away at the back.
Interviewer
So you’ve mentioned a lot of the Saxon objects you’ve found. Have you found any objects pre-dating these?
Peter Dawson
Well Martham is well known to have been Saxon.
But yes you’re right. In fact near the centre of the village I found two Roman broaches, one with yellow wear—not gold—around it, it would have had a semi-precious stone in it, it’s a normal-looking, almost modern broach, the semi-precious stone’s been lost, and that’s a more familiar type of Roman broach called a dolphin broach. It would have been a little bit longer at that end. Both found right near the centre of the village.
So yes it’s a Saxon village but it’s also a Roman village, probably extending out from Cayster (??) at the time. And a very small number of Roman coins have been found by colleagues and I which are also illustrated here. So we’ve got Roman Martham as well as Saxon.
That’s medieval gold ring. It’s an ecclesiastical ring. I know it’s not easy to identify but you can see the face of the Virgin Mary there, and Jesus there. So she has Jesus on her shoulder, about 1500 in date, and that’s the landowner now, but as you say it comes right opposite Flag High School and nice that a gold ring is from church farm.
Everybody talks about gold when it comes to metal detecting but I like the individual, ordinary stuff. That’s a bone knife handle. You identify it by the odd bit of metal on the end. But there’s the knife, blade would have been there. 500-600 years old. Someone in Martham probably ate their dinner with that. Worthless, but they carved a bit of bone and made the knife. And I like that.
