Rob’s valuable idea
A spiffing idea here from a detectorist called “Rob” who proposes that if someone finds a hoard of ten thousand previously rare coins the reward shouldn’t assume the individual coins are now common but that they’re still very rare – and therefore expensive! So if one had sold for £1,000 last year then the taxpayer must now shell out £1,000 x 10,000 for the hoard, which adds up to a tidy £10 million. Nice one Rob! All for the love of history, eh! (Great name by the way!)

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Ah bless!
The Countryside Alliance’s recent photography competition attracted lots of entries. One judge enthused “The winning photos are totally different — a classic cover shot, with lovely light and sharply in focus, and a hugely appealing shot of a small child hugging a hound”.
It’s not yet clear however whether any of the shots show a child hugging a fox with its entrails ripped out.
(The Countryside Alliance does love children though. Here’s a recent video of them teaching inner city kids how to shoot!)

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Who cares, it’s oop North….
Thornborough Henges have been described by David Miles of English Heritage as “the most important prehistoric site between Stonehenge and the Orkneys”. Yet they’re little known nationally and this must surely have contributed to the ease with which their immediate setting has been subject to decades of ruination by mining companies such as Tarmac. Who could be in any doubt that if they had been better known or subject to greater academic attention or (which is perhaps the same thing) they had been situated 200 miles further south it wouldn’t have happened.

We found a recent telling remark on this blog that illustrates the point perfectly:
“How unknown it is can be best shown by a search I did at The Open University Online Library, where there was 1 document mentioning Thornborough Henge, Avebury Circle has 190 documents and Stonehenge 963.”

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