HIDDEN 1600 YEARS

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1935, Page 9 (Supplement)

HIDDEN 1600 YEARS

TREASURE IN ROMAN ENGLAND. HIDING-PLACE OF FAMILY. Yorkshire woodmen with the historic •name of Colin Campbell, digging up the far past in Edlington Wood, near Doncaster, brought to light not long ago the secrets of a family who lived about 1600 years ago. The family lived in Roman England, in a simple village which stood encircled by rough ramparts. The people worked for their masters and themselves in the way common to village life in all ages, digging, planting, harvesting, shearing, spinning, weaving. The family had ambitions and knew that money meant power. In a private hiding-place they put away about 500 coins and some old trinkets.

What happened to the family we cannot tell, except that they left their treasure behind them. A few generations later the Romans left Britain for good. Then came the stormy, centuries until first the Saxons and then the Normans took charge of the country. Tire newcomers left the RomanBritish villages alone for the most part, and made villages and towns for themselves. Beautiful churches, monasteries, castles arose. Men uf another speech began to create a new England, and the rude little native homes crumbled and sank, fell into ruin. Grass grew over the mounds that held so many secrets of life and hope.

One day someone planted a grove of trees on the grassy patches which covered the sleeping past. The grove became Edlington Wood, now the property of Earl Fitzwilliam. In January this year a son of Colin Campbell happened to find a curious brooch in the wood.' He thought it an old gimcrack, and forgot about it until one day, looking at the Roman' antiquities in Doncaster Museum, he spied brooches of the same kind.

After that Campbells set to work to search the wood, and had a most thrilling time hunting for buried treasure. They found more brooches, and then a hoard of about 80 coins. Presently they found a large hoard of 420. ' Then came a cold moment, for they found .that the treasure was not theirs at all! By an ancient law all those coins and the’ old trinkets, under the pretty name of Treasure Trove,' belonged to the Crown; if the finders hid their booty they were .liable to trouble. The Doncaster District Coroner took charge of the finds, and for the first time for . over 25 years held a Treasure Trove Inquest. It was an amusing sitting, and the jury found that the coins and brooches were really Treasure Trove and had been honourably given up by the finders.

The coroner wrote to the Treasury about it, and the next thing is that these coins and trinkets will go to the British Museum for examination. Such as are of historic value will be kept, and the finders rewarded.

The Society of Antiquaries are interested, of course, and it is possible that many spades may get to work under the greenwood tree. In the meantime a most ■ charming paragraph in the social history of a very old people has been written. Where but in a country like England could this have happened?