Hello, I lived in the south of England in 1976 and 1977, and during my time there I spent at least 10 weekends digging in the mud of the Thames. I had a Volkswagen camper and camped and dug in Southwark between the site of the Globe theater and Southwark bridge. There was a handy set of concrete stairs that led right down from the street to the ‘foreshore’. That area was a lot of old warehouses then. I’m guessing it’s all apartment buildings now. I suppose the stairs to the mud have been demolished.
At that time anyone could dig in the mud, but you didn’t see more than a handful of people doing that. I don’t really remember any restrictions around the tower, but I never hunted there so there probably were some.
At the time in the UK you were supposed to get a ‘pipefinders license’ to use a metal detector. Just another way for the government to rob you.
Never found anything of great value. Best pieces were a brass counting token (Jeton) that came out of the mud looking like gold. Took it to the BM and they identified it.. 14th century, possibly late 13th. Also a hammered penny from reign of Elizabeth the 1st. Unfortunately I lost the penny many years ago.
I found tons of surface pins, but not much in the way of coins. I was told that pin making had been a cottage industry near the river. There were a few other Victorian and more modern coins, nothing exciting.
I still have a few river things.. a single handmade dice (die?), with a hole that some one bored through to wear as a good luck piece and the token and like, the NGC show, I kept a couple of pipe bowls.
The NGC show brought back a lot of memories. The detectors in the 70’s were useless in the muck of the river. The thing to do then was choose a spot as the tide was going out, dig a hole and use a sifter (with a large screen) in an inner tube at waters edge. The river police were always coming by in boats telling us to fill the holes back in before the tide came back. The river is probably cleaner now, but the ‘foreshore’ looks pretty much the same as I remember it. Sure didn’t see anyone kayaking in the river then.
I lived just north of Portsmouth, in a little town named Southwick. I had a detector that I bought in the UK and detected a lot of local footpaths. I think the detector was a ‘C-Scope’. Mostly found British Army Buttons/Badges and Coins from the 1930’s. The whole area was used for staging of the DDay invasion and the soldiers lost a lot of small stuff.
I did find some live ammo, but quickly got rid of it.. Even then England was not a friendly place for guns/ammo in the hand of ordinary folks.
I don’t detect any more, but I’ve been following this forum for a long time. I do fish the beach a lot here (Atlantic Ocean) in southern Florida and rarely see anyone detecting the beach. The beach I fish does not see many folks on the beach, so it makes sense that there is not much incentive to search where I am.
I am a little bit south of Sebastian, I think that beach does get searched a lot as there were some galleon wrecks in this area. There are two treasure museums in the area, McClarty and Mel Fisher in Sebastian.
Anyway, that was a good show.
I will post a few pictures soon of my old river and dirt finds.
