The following are from Eureka, our hard copy magazine from the pre website era.
July 1991.
Editor Reg Nightingale paid a visit to the British Museum:
“British Museum Cafe – Members tempted to use the new cafe in the British Museum should be warned – the prices appear to be set at a level which should make the museum financially independent for life! I recently went in there all unsuspecting and was charged £4.20 for a single round of sandwiches, a cake and a cup of very indifferent coffee! I know we are supposed to be financially supporting our museums but that’s ridiculous.”
I guess you’d be lucky to get the sandwich for £4.20 theses days. And just think what you can see for free anyway – got to be worth a lunch.
Perhaps Reg had calmed down by the time he put together the Abstract pages.
“GOLDEN AGE OF METAL DETECTING.
The Independent on Sunday of 10th March (1991) reviews the historical value of finds made by detectorists in recent years. The Keeper of Coins at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum describes the present times as ‘a golden age’ as ordinary members of the public are estimated to be responsible for finding two million archaeological objects and 700 sites per year. The article deplores the the absence of any proper mechanism for reporting finds either because of lack of investment or because archaeologists are suspicious of amateurs. It goes on to say how much better things are in Norfolk than elsewhere and ends with a statement by Dr Henry Cleere, director of the CBA, and thought by many to be an arch enemy of detectorists, that: ‘Only a small minority of detectorists act irresponsibly.'”
Is that estimate realistic? Perhaps if you include every piece of shrapnel, every ring pull, button,screw and ordnance, it might be. It was not until 1997 that the Public Antiquities Scheme can into existence to encourage accurate reporting of finds.
November 1991.
This item by the new editor David Hunt was, sort of, in the same vein as the previous report. The club put on an exhibition at the AGM of the Woldingham Society..
“Most comments were favourable but there were one or two ‘sniffy noses’ around. I was told by David Jones, that having studied Reg Nightingale’s (previous editor) collection of brass petrol caps, one person asked ‘Don’t you think that by finding them now you are denying someone the opportunity of finding them in 1000 years time?’ Makes you think doesn’t it?
And poor old Reg’s blood pressure had only just come down from the shock of the price of his his British Museum lunch.
Finally, from the same issue.
“THIMBLE MYSTERY SOLVED?
Most of us must have wondered why so many thimbles turn up in fields. The November issue of Treasure Hunting includes a letter from a B. Rowley stating that a retired farmer told him that women working on collecting and binding corn into sheaves, before machines were invented to perform this arduous task, wore thimbles on every finger, presumably to protect the ends of their fingers from damage. Whether or not this is true it certainly makes sense and is, as far as I know, the only suggestion anyone had put anyone has put forward to explain this phenomenon.
Chairman Joe.
