With autumn moving into winter, and Bill benefitting from a break in the weather, he headed out from London and travelled to Gedding. The aim: to clock up some decent metal detecting time and spend a week seeing what he could find. After settling in, on Friday, October 8, Bill gave over the afternoon to metal detecting, trapesing through fields but without much luck.

Instead, Bill unearthed a collection of odds and ends, including a musket ball, a Medieval pottery rim fragment, and an interesting bronze knob-shaped item (pictured) that Bill reckons could be either Roman or Medieval. Disappointing detecting day over, Bill headed back to clean his finds and prepared them for shipping to the archaeological people in Bury St Edmunds for recording and identifying.

Friday may have proved disappointing on the detecting front, but Saturday proved worse still, much to Bill’s frustration. After starting early to check out a site in Preston St Mary, Bill says he unearthed little aside from what he termed ‘modern rubbish’ rather than the cast-offs of history. The result: a large drawer handle, a small curtain ring, and around 15 coins – ranging from a George VI florin to modern decimal money. And not much at, that.

Monday fared little better, with Bill saying that signals proved rare and he detected nothing for a bleak two-hour stretch, aside from yet another musket ball, a copper lid-like item with some gold gilding, and an unidentified coin or token, complete with a suspension hole. Maybe better luck next time.