More than 5000 ancient coins of 11th century vintage found in Buckinghamshire field

#Buckinghamshire #AngloSaxon #Aylesbury Just four days before Christmas a member of the Weekend Wanderers Metal Detecting Club had discovered a treasure trove of more than 5000 old coins of 11th century vintage in a field near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.
The find has been hailed as an "unprecedented" find by the county's keeper of archaeology Brett Thorn from Bucks County Museum. He has said that it was the largest hoard of Saxon coins ever found in the county and the second largest in the UK.
It seems Paul Coleman, from Southampton, was participating in a dig in the Padbury area on 21 December when he came across the coins from the late Anglo Saxon, early Norman period – the coins depicted the heads of kings Ethelred the Unready and Canute.
As explained by the club spokesman Peter Welch, the coins were buried in a lead bucket, and appeared to look almost uncirculated, as if they were straight from a mint. Brett Thorn has remarked that the find was "massive" and the largest find of Saxon coins since 1840 when about 7,000 were unearthed in Cuerdale, near Preston in Lancashire.