THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

UNEARTHING THE PAST WITH MARK HOBDEN — 2000

Copyright Valerie Martin 2000

Published in Along the Furlong in January 2001

On the 7th July 2000 I heard from Mark Hobden for the first time.   He had stumbled across my website and was interested in the information I had collated about Findon. 

Mark is a 36-year-old keen metal detectorist who lives on the Sussex coast and has always been fascinated by the history of local villages and towns.  When he contacted me he was wondering if there were any Findon landowners who would be willing to let him search on their land for coins, artefacts and even hidden treasure trove lying undiscovered.

I gave him all the information I knew and pointed him in the direction of David Akehurst, the manager of Tolmare Farm on the Long Furlong Road, A280.

Ten days later I heard from Mark again.  He had not been idle but had spoken to the farm manager who had agreed that he could search the agricultural land.  The drawback was that most of the farm was down to crops.  A bull with a glint in its eye was wandering around the pasture fields and Mark did not fancy trying his hand at being a matador.  Working in the grazing fields appeared to be out of the question at that time.  The good news was that the crops were due to be harvested in two or three weeks' time.  It was now a matter of being patient.

On the 12th September I heard from Mark once more.  He had commenced his metal detecting in the field to the north of St. John the Baptist Church, known as North Park, the site of the original village of Findon.   An air survey, carried out I understand in the 1970s, revealed nothing of consequence.  

There are many theories for the migration of the village to its present location.  These range from plague, to the Lord of the Manor banishing the community from his doorstep because he did not like the proximity and the smell coming from the hovels. 

North Park was particularly difficult for Mark to check as it had been cut to stubble.  Undaunted, he thoroughly investigated the area on a couple of occasions and the weather was good.  Unfortunately, he only discovered a few shoe buckles, a thimble, (which was not as old as he first hoped, as it was aluminium), a few old nails and a handful of musket balls — perhaps the latter confirm the presence of infantry in the area as described in "The Lost Feather Bed".  He added that there was a large amount of pottery around and also quite a few oyster shells which denoted habitation. 

He was merrily searching away in the field in the blazing heat when a movement suddenly caught his eye.  He heard the sound of a labouring engine and, although he had permission to be there, it was with some trepidation that he saw a white van bumping across the rough ground in the dazzling sun and heading straight for him. 

He had been concentrating so hard on what he was doing in digging up the past, that for a split second he thought they were thirteenth century muggers come to loot him of all his worldly possessions. He could not see who was inside but when the vehicle pulled up alongside him, he inwardly groaned, as what he thought looked like three dubious looking characters clambered out.  Mark was not one to succumb to intimidation and so stood his ground, spade at the ready and detector on full stun ready to do battle.  The silence was broken by

"Find anything decent mate?"

It appears that his shady looking visitors were nighthawkers, the kind of guys who give the hobby of metal detecting a bad name.  They must have spied him in the field and thought it might be a good area for a chat in readiness for a future illicit raid.  They quite openly offered to give Mark a lift to show him some of the locations they had illegally searched in the past.   He politely declined their overtures.  Eventually, the van and its cheery occupants trundled off across the bumpy stumble and Mark continued with his labours.

He is now waiting for the site of the old village to be ploughed and once this is done there is a chance that further "finds" can be unearthed from Findon's medieval past.

Mark had also gained permission from the farm manager to search the site of the Romano-British community on the Tolmare land, north-west of the farm buildings. 

This was reputedly a third century Romano-British farm and comprised a considerable settlement, which was probably destroyed in a fire.  Archæology finds in the past  have pointed to this fact.  The farm was built on the site of an even earlier Celtic village, and vast quantities of tiling, potsherds and evidence of long settlement on the area have been discovered during excavations in more recent years. 

This time, our intrepid metal detectorist was luckier as the field had already been under the plough, rolled, drilled and seeded and the farmer was still kind enough to let him explore it.  He said it was just heaven compared to the hard work in the field of stubble.  As he worked he could see that parts of the earth were blackened, indicating that there had been habitation in the past, although there was not much sign of pottery.  I have heard that in the past there was so much pottery unearthed that it was re-buried!

Mark also discovered in this field three bronze finger rings, one from a child, another an adult and a man's thumb ring.  A small bronze buckle was found, too small for a shoe.  

Another bronze artefact implement was also discovered.   This was about 5 inches long and tubular.  One end had a sharp point while the other end was more flattened.   There was no pattern on the bronze.  It could have been a surgical instrument, or one used for toiletry.   It may even be a stylus — the flattened end could have been used to erase any mistakes.

Mark also revealed a bronze woad grinder, which may be Celtic.  When the Roman troops (the Status Legionares Exploratores) arrived in the Findon area they were most likely met by well-defined tribes of inhabitants daubed with blue  — their faces lavished with woad. 

Woad was an early form of local Findon agriculture and would have been grown by a woader.  The crop looked in appearance like a field of small cabbages with pointed leaves and insignificant unprepossessing yellow flowers. Large woad plantations were, in fact, grown anywhere with poor or chalky soil, such as Findon. The young leaves were collected and pulverised, before being kneaded into rounds.  They were then dried and stored in casks. After months of patience, the strong blue dye emerged. 

These early inhabitants of the Findon area most likely stripped naked and decorated themselves with the blue dye when the legionaries were heard to be nearby. The woad was dual purpose.  It supposedly frightened opponents and also acted as a healer on the body. Any person daubed in woad apparently had a better chance of survival if wounded in a skirmish.  

Three Roman "follis" bronze coins have been discovered, which I understand were introduced around AD 296 and confirm the habitation of the site around that period.  Two of them are in extremely poor condition to the extent where it was almost impossible to identify anything.  The other was also in an equally worn condition but at least Mark could make out the Emperor's head, although little of the legend.  He has yet to identify this. 

A further find was a King George I penny.  (Reigned from 1714 -1727). 

A Victorian silver florin also came to light and a 1945 sixpence, these were within six feet of each other.  

It is not always dry and sunny when metal detecting.  There is always the unforeseen.  One day, Mark received an electric shock from one of the fences when he was climbing through a fence with spade and metal detector.   He slipped on a cow pat and threw out his arm to stop falling over.  Grabbing the electric wire to stop himself landing on the ground (and cow pat), he developed the fastest perm known to man.

In September I heard that a bomb disposal team had been called Robert Heath's Muntham Farm following a bomb alert.   This was when a metal dectectorist discovered a Second World War anti-tank shell.  I guess it had been abandoned during exercises by the Canadian Army when they were camped in the vicinity during the war.  I wondered if the metal detectorist was Mark — but it turned out to be another enthusiast — who had stumbled on the find between the farm and the site of the mansion, Muntham Court.  The bomb was lying in undergrowth and was 1 ft. by 4 in. wide.  Previously he had only unearthed soldiers' buttons and knives and forks with names on them.  I think this latest discovery gave him quite a shock.

Fortunately, after conducting tests this time, the team realised the discovery was actually a shell, and therefore, did not pose any threat.   I wonder how many more little reminders of the last war are there around awaiting to be discovered in the Findon area?

The search goes on for further Findon artefacts from the past. 

Continue if you would like to read about The Great Findon Flood of 18th March 2002.

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This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.