An account of the artefacts and coins found on the Cheshire coast

Now that all the sandhills have been swept away by the tide and erosion, the only part to be seen today
is the boulder clay. This now presents us with the question as to where the remainder of artieacts and
coins that were not retrieved has been deposited.

About July 1855 a certain H.Ecroyd Smith arrived on the Liverpool scene, he had some experience as
an archeaologist, and, early in 1852, published a very interesting volume called "RELIQUIAE
INSURIANAE". Knowing what a storehouse of objects had been discovered at Meols it was not long
before he frequented the area at regular intervals and the result is more than a minute acquaintance on
his part with the locality and because of this he collected more objects than anyone else.
Without going into detail as to the owners stature in life I will itemise six names and numbers of objects
in their possession:

Mr. Ainslie: 100 collected since 1817
Mrs. Longueville: 12 collected since 1840

Dr. A. Hume: 800 collected since 1840
Mr. Mayer: 1000 collected since 1847

Mr. H.E.Smith: 1100 collected since 1856

Mr. Robinson: 50 collected sine 1849

As three thousand objects had been known, it is not unlikely that many thousand had been discovered
and never been declared, recording was somewhat of a haphazard nature and was not compulsary
outside precious metal. I have read many dig reports in the years I have been researching but items of
gold or silver were very rare indeed.

The material in which the objects were manufactured was, gold, silver, bronze, brass. iron, lead, pewter,
wood, glass, flint, pottery, jet, amber, bone, leather and enamel. The number of items in each category is
too numerous to itemise here but the enormous of items counted make my collection look like a penny
bazaar. Classification of the objects found, Hume wrote of their antiquity:

"On this part of the subject there is difficulty in expressing an opinion. A common mode of learning the
date of antiquarian objects is by finding them in connection with others, the exact age of which is well
known, and in this way, objects, long supposed to be Saxon or Norman for example, have been
identified as possibly or actually Roman. In like manner, objects popularly supposed to be modern, in
some instances really so, have been shown to possess identity of form with other unquestionably British
or Saxon".

The volume of finds presented to appointed recorders by detector users have increased 100 fold since the
introduction of the new Treasure Act of 1996. A voluntary code of practice has been drawn up and
seems to working better than anticipated.

One century or more later we are in a better position for identification inasmuch as information
gleaned from various digs identifies all objects found in context as those from that period.

Those recovered from arable land by the metal detections are or can be of great age, I myself have
found coins and artefacts from the Bronze Age through to Roman, Saxon, Viking and Medieval.

We are aware of the need to associate the objects with others in the same situation that can be dated
for certain, we have already been reminded of that earlier, but even as highly trained specialists as
modern day archeaology possess they need this information to identify artifacts presented to them in
ever increasing numbers by detector users.

Now that the hobby has been organised into a main group I feel the need has arisen for an independant
service for identification.

      Ancient Meols.3           Back to Ancient Meols.1 

Index Page