This is the first of an occasional look into the club’s archives. We start in the days when cut and paste meant using scissors and glue, when desktop publishing required an actual desk and typing involved a typewriter or if you were really up to date, a word processor.
The editorship of this monthly newsletter passed from hand-to-hand on the basis of the incumbent eventually running out of enthusiasm. This one was edited by Geoff Burr.
Eureka (after which one of our trophies is named) was typically twelve pages of club news, announcements and items of interest gleaned from other media.
Members supplied stamped addressed envelopes to ensure receipt and thereby know when searches and meetings were taking place. We are pre email here. If you did have a portable phone (today’s mobile) it was the size and weight of a brick and made a bit of a bulge in the pocket.
Eureka sometimes included details of the current ring round system whereby all could be informed of changes to the published searches. A couple of members did not have phones, so I guess pigeons were deployed.
From March 1985.
HIGHWAYMAN’S LOOT DISCOVERED.
Dark muddy tracks, moonlight glinting through the overhanging branches, the sound of horses’ hooves . “Stand and deliver! Your money or your life.”
The highwayman takes all the weary travellers have and rides off into the night to his woodland hide where he secrets his hoard in the branches of a tree before departing for another hold up. But it all goes wrong and the next victim draws his pistol and fires. The villain’s days are over.
Over 200 years later Les Clayton’s C Scope finds the highwayman’s hoard in the roots of an old oak tree at Gads Hill, Strood. The area has a long history of highwaymen robbing sailors on their way to London having been paid off at Chatham.
This would account for the variety of dates of the coins in the find – mid 16c to late 17c. Such loot was hidden high up. Done whist still mounted and out of the reach of passers by. Over the years the centre of the tree had rotted away causing the money to fall down among the roots. When found there were traces of a cloth bag but it went to dust as soon as it was touched.
FEBRUARY 1986.
Did you know that the best machine to use on Roman, or other, latrine sites is one with a motion discriminator. Saves digging up a load of s***.
Chairman Joe.
