Cheers and Boos: ARCH on the march, sheep’s clothing in Wales and more January cheer

ARCH on the march
The more we hear about ARCH, the Alliance to Reduce Heritage Crime, the better it seems. The plan is simple – to create “an England-wide series of effective partnerships between organisations and communities to protect heritage” and that’s what is happening. Conferences and training events have been held and English Heritage has tons of guidance for all concerned on it’s website. We noticed that “Guidance for sentencers” is coming soon – how good is that?! (“Maximum is there to be occasionally used Your Honour”!) The campaign appears to have struck a big chord with the public. Awareness events have been held in many cities and the latest one in Lincolnshire has been extended. (Incidentally, at that one the museum is running a Fakes & Forgeries competition where you can win a truly, truly irresistible Sherlock Holmes teddy bear!)

Sheep’s clothing in Wales
The Pembrokeshire Prospectors are the poster boys of responsible detecting, so full of rules Mother Theresa would find it hard to get in and they’ve even just published a second book of their finds. But they have a dirty little secret: nowhere in their rules, constitution or code of conduct do they require Members to follow the official Code of Responsible Detecting or report their finds to the Portable Antiquities Scheme! There’s only one explanation: they have Members that aren’t prepared to comply with the very practices that are supposed to distinguish responsible detectorists from the selfish remainder. What a scandal that Pembrokeshire landowners are being bamboozled in this way and that PAS doesn’t do it’s job by telling them.

(If PAS put up a web page warning farmers about this scam – which is hobby-wide with nearly every club doing the same – or if the Pembrokeshire Prospectors contact us saying they’ve made the necessary changes we’ll be happy to amend this article. What could be fairer?)

And in case you still can’t see an end to Winter…
Here’s a reminder of a bit of comfort we posted a couple of years ago