Badger Bart
Sr. Member
- Mar 24, 2005
- 301
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...ent.html?in_page_id=1787&in_article_id=390211
How a treasure hunter struck gold with a mysterious ring
By ROBERT HARDMAN, Daily Mail 09:29am 12th June 2006
Had it not been for one last, high-pitched quack from his metal detector, John Wood might have called it a day. Instead, he stuck his trowel in the ground and poked around. In all probability, it would turn out to be another nail or a tin.
On a good day, it might be an old coin worth enough to cover the day's petrol. From a few inches down in the Cheshire mud, he plucked an odd-looking object - a bit like a ring-pull from a drinks can. He stuck it in his pocket without a great deal more thought.
But that muddy little curio is about to guarantee the retired Manchester tool engineer a very comfortable retirement. Mr Wood's discovery was not a ring-pull but the stuff of fairytales and film scripts.
He had unearthed one of the greatest finds in modern metal-detecting history - a medieval gold ring with a rare diamond, a royal inscription and a mysterious Da Vinci-style royal code all of its own.
Now, after four years of detective work and the help of a glamorous Oxford classicist, Mr Wood, 63, thinks that he may have cracked the code. And on Thursday morning, his precious find will be auctioned at Christie's, where it could fetch up to £100,000.
Princess Margaret's jewels are certainly not the only intriguing royal treasures on the London market this week.
Holding up Mr Wood's magnificent 650-year-old discovery, I am captivated by the intricacy of its craftsmanship and by its tiny cryptic messages, barely legible to the naked eye. I dare not try it on. It might get stuck and it's probably worth more than my finger.
Mr Wood's find has made him the David Beckham of the metal-detecting world. And what must make it so galling for lifelong enthusiasts is that he is a relative newcomer.
"It started as something to do while I was fishing," he tells me. "I thought there might be stuff on the riverbanks and fishing is a bit like metal-detecting anyway. It's all about the thrill of the chase and the catch."
Six years ago, he bought a detector on a whim. "It was £350 secondhand, a White's Spectrum XLT," he tells me precisely. Metal-detecting chaps - and they are almost always chaps - take their kit very seriously indeed.
With his new machine, Mr Wood was soon getting lucky. Testing his new purchase in a local park, he started finding loose change everywhere. "I reckon I must have found £1,500 in dropped pound coins over the years," he says proudly.
He started reading the metal-detecting press - there's a healthy rivalry between The Searcher, and Treasure Hunting - and he soon joined the North-West Metal Detecting Club which opened up new horizons.
"You can't turn up anywhere and start searching. But the club makes arrangements with landowners, so we go all over the country."
Meeting every Sunday, the club would travel as far afield as Lincolnshire, and Mr Wood soon became the club's treasurer. "We always make sure the farmer gets half the proceeds of anything we find, and a bottle of whisky," he explains.
On one trip, he found a George III halfguinea which fetched £40. On another, he found a Henry VIII coin worth £100. But, usually, it would be a lot of tin cans and the odd 10p piece.
Then, on a rainy May morning in 2002, the club arrived on farmland at Manley Old Hall on the edge of Cheshire's Delamere Forest.
"We'd been over these ploughed fields without finding much," Mr Wood recalls. "I said to my mate, Mike: 'What shall we do next?' So we thought we'd give this other field a go before leaving. On the way, we passed a farmhand who said: 'You won't find nothing up there. It's been done.' Anyway, I started looking and in two minutes I got a signal."
'Worth thousands'
The signal suggested the presence of a tin can. £Then up came this thing. Mike said it looked "like one of those gifts from a fairground. We went back to the cars and I showed it to two experienced guys from the club. One of them nearly fainted. He said: 'That's a gold ring and it's worth thousands.'"
They informed the farmer and returned home. After a bit of spit and polish, it was clear that this was no ordinary ring. It was certainly gold and crowned with a black diamond. It also carried the inscription "loyaute sans fin", French for "loyalty without end".
Elsewhere, it appeared to carry the letter "E" three times, each one followed by three stars. And either side of the "bezel" - the diamond centrepiece - sat two gold initials: "V" and "A".
Under the Treasure Act of 1996, anything which could be termed "treasure" - any precious metal item likely to be more than 300 years old - must be reported.
Once it is valued by an independent panel of experts and no public museum wants to buy it, it can be sold on the open market with the proceeds split between the finder and the landowner.
The find was duly reported and the Government's Treasure Valuation Committee - a board of independent experts - classified it as a 14th-Century love ring of 88 per cent gold and valued it at £2,000. Mr Wood refused to accept the verdict. He had started doing some homework with his wife, Jan, a passionate amateur historian.
They had established that the Delamere Forest was a favourite royal hunting ground of Edward III - which would certainly fit the 14th-Century dating. Surely, they argued, the "E" and the three stars related to the monarch of the day.
Furthermore, Edward was laying claim to swathes of France including Valois and Anjou. Might these not be the "V" and the "A"?
The ring went before another committee and the valuation shot up to £20,000. At the same time, Mr Wood received the metal-detecting equivalent of an Oscar - the 2003 Searcher Magazine Artefact Of The Year Award. But he was still unhappy with the valuation.
Another committee agreed and the value was raised to £40,000. He accepted the estimate, but when no museum came forward to purchase the ring, it reverted to Mr Wood.
He took it to Christie's where it made an instant impression on the auction house's resident jewellery expert, Helen Molesworth.
"It is one of the best medieval rings to come on the open market for years, real museum quality. Diamonds were extremely rare then and this is clearly a man's ring," says Miss Molesworth, 28, a fellow of the Gemological Association.
"Loyaute sans fin" makes this a loyalty ring. It is expressing a political sentiment rather than a love interest." An Oxford-educated classicist who went on to study medieval Latin and art, she has never doubted that the "E" and the three stars refer to Edward III. But the V and A? "Valois" and "Anjou" did not seem personal enough.
So she started looking deeper into the political machinations of the age.
And one day, it just leaped out of a book on the 100 Years War. One of the King's greatest supporters in his quest for the French throne was a Flemish textiles tycoon and warlord called Jacob Van Artevelde.
It was no token friendship. Van Artevelde was a godfather to Edward's son, John of Gaunt. And Edward's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, was godmother to Van Artevelde's son, Philip.
Their loyalty to one another eventually did for Jacob in 1345 when an angry Flemish mob declared that his love of England had exceeded his duty to Flanders. He was trapped and murdered in Ghent where his statue still stands, a true case, surely, of "Loyaute Sans Fin". Edward III was known for rewarding his most faithful supporters with elaborate jewellery. So, in the absence of any superior argument, Miss Molesworth concludes that this ring was probably a gift from Edward III to his closest Flemish supporter.
So it would seem that Jacob, or one of his heirs, then managed to lose this royal trinket in the hunting field. I try to picture the scene as a distraught Flemish billionaire and umpteen flunkies grovel around in the Cheshire mud looking frantically for the boss's priceless gift from the Sovereign.
Now, 650 years later, it belongs to Mr Wood and he will be in London on Thursday to bid farewell to the find of a lifetime (he will share the proceeds with the farmer, David Ford).
"I'll be rather sorry to see it go," admits Mr Wood as he returns to Manley, the site of his triumph. "It's become part of my life." So what will he do next? "Oh, I'm off with the club on Sunday. You never know what's down there."
Indeed, you don't.
How a treasure hunter struck gold with a mysterious ring
By ROBERT HARDMAN, Daily Mail 09:29am 12th June 2006
Had it not been for one last, high-pitched quack from his metal detector, John Wood might have called it a day. Instead, he stuck his trowel in the ground and poked around. In all probability, it would turn out to be another nail or a tin.
On a good day, it might be an old coin worth enough to cover the day's petrol. From a few inches down in the Cheshire mud, he plucked an odd-looking object - a bit like a ring-pull from a drinks can. He stuck it in his pocket without a great deal more thought.
But that muddy little curio is about to guarantee the retired Manchester tool engineer a very comfortable retirement. Mr Wood's discovery was not a ring-pull but the stuff of fairytales and film scripts.
He had unearthed one of the greatest finds in modern metal-detecting history - a medieval gold ring with a rare diamond, a royal inscription and a mysterious Da Vinci-style royal code all of its own.
Now, after four years of detective work and the help of a glamorous Oxford classicist, Mr Wood, 63, thinks that he may have cracked the code. And on Thursday morning, his precious find will be auctioned at Christie's, where it could fetch up to £100,000.
Princess Margaret's jewels are certainly not the only intriguing royal treasures on the London market this week.
Holding up Mr Wood's magnificent 650-year-old discovery, I am captivated by the intricacy of its craftsmanship and by its tiny cryptic messages, barely legible to the naked eye. I dare not try it on. It might get stuck and it's probably worth more than my finger.
Mr Wood's find has made him the David Beckham of the metal-detecting world. And what must make it so galling for lifelong enthusiasts is that he is a relative newcomer.
"It started as something to do while I was fishing," he tells me. "I thought there might be stuff on the riverbanks and fishing is a bit like metal-detecting anyway. It's all about the thrill of the chase and the catch."
Six years ago, he bought a detector on a whim. "It was £350 secondhand, a White's Spectrum XLT," he tells me precisely. Metal-detecting chaps - and they are almost always chaps - take their kit very seriously indeed.
With his new machine, Mr Wood was soon getting lucky. Testing his new purchase in a local park, he started finding loose change everywhere. "I reckon I must have found £1,500 in dropped pound coins over the years," he says proudly.
He started reading the metal-detecting press - there's a healthy rivalry between The Searcher, and Treasure Hunting - and he soon joined the North-West Metal Detecting Club which opened up new horizons.
"You can't turn up anywhere and start searching. But the club makes arrangements with landowners, so we go all over the country."
Meeting every Sunday, the club would travel as far afield as Lincolnshire, and Mr Wood soon became the club's treasurer. "We always make sure the farmer gets half the proceeds of anything we find, and a bottle of whisky," he explains.
On one trip, he found a George III halfguinea which fetched £40. On another, he found a Henry VIII coin worth £100. But, usually, it would be a lot of tin cans and the odd 10p piece.
Then, on a rainy May morning in 2002, the club arrived on farmland at Manley Old Hall on the edge of Cheshire's Delamere Forest.
"We'd been over these ploughed fields without finding much," Mr Wood recalls. "I said to my mate, Mike: 'What shall we do next?' So we thought we'd give this other field a go before leaving. On the way, we passed a farmhand who said: 'You won't find nothing up there. It's been done.' Anyway, I started looking and in two minutes I got a signal."
'Worth thousands'
The signal suggested the presence of a tin can. £Then up came this thing. Mike said it looked "like one of those gifts from a fairground. We went back to the cars and I showed it to two experienced guys from the club. One of them nearly fainted. He said: 'That's a gold ring and it's worth thousands.'"
They informed the farmer and returned home. After a bit of spit and polish, it was clear that this was no ordinary ring. It was certainly gold and crowned with a black diamond. It also carried the inscription "loyaute sans fin", French for "loyalty without end".
Elsewhere, it appeared to carry the letter "E" three times, each one followed by three stars. And either side of the "bezel" - the diamond centrepiece - sat two gold initials: "V" and "A".
Under the Treasure Act of 1996, anything which could be termed "treasure" - any precious metal item likely to be more than 300 years old - must be reported.
Once it is valued by an independent panel of experts and no public museum wants to buy it, it can be sold on the open market with the proceeds split between the finder and the landowner.
The find was duly reported and the Government's Treasure Valuation Committee - a board of independent experts - classified it as a 14th-Century love ring of 88 per cent gold and valued it at £2,000. Mr Wood refused to accept the verdict. He had started doing some homework with his wife, Jan, a passionate amateur historian.
They had established that the Delamere Forest was a favourite royal hunting ground of Edward III - which would certainly fit the 14th-Century dating. Surely, they argued, the "E" and the three stars related to the monarch of the day.
Furthermore, Edward was laying claim to swathes of France including Valois and Anjou. Might these not be the "V" and the "A"?
The ring went before another committee and the valuation shot up to £20,000. At the same time, Mr Wood received the metal-detecting equivalent of an Oscar - the 2003 Searcher Magazine Artefact Of The Year Award. But he was still unhappy with the valuation.
Another committee agreed and the value was raised to £40,000. He accepted the estimate, but when no museum came forward to purchase the ring, it reverted to Mr Wood.
He took it to Christie's where it made an instant impression on the auction house's resident jewellery expert, Helen Molesworth.
"It is one of the best medieval rings to come on the open market for years, real museum quality. Diamonds were extremely rare then and this is clearly a man's ring," says Miss Molesworth, 28, a fellow of the Gemological Association.
"Loyaute sans fin" makes this a loyalty ring. It is expressing a political sentiment rather than a love interest." An Oxford-educated classicist who went on to study medieval Latin and art, she has never doubted that the "E" and the three stars refer to Edward III. But the V and A? "Valois" and "Anjou" did not seem personal enough.
So she started looking deeper into the political machinations of the age.
And one day, it just leaped out of a book on the 100 Years War. One of the King's greatest supporters in his quest for the French throne was a Flemish textiles tycoon and warlord called Jacob Van Artevelde.
It was no token friendship. Van Artevelde was a godfather to Edward's son, John of Gaunt. And Edward's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, was godmother to Van Artevelde's son, Philip.
Their loyalty to one another eventually did for Jacob in 1345 when an angry Flemish mob declared that his love of England had exceeded his duty to Flanders. He was trapped and murdered in Ghent where his statue still stands, a true case, surely, of "Loyaute Sans Fin". Edward III was known for rewarding his most faithful supporters with elaborate jewellery. So, in the absence of any superior argument, Miss Molesworth concludes that this ring was probably a gift from Edward III to his closest Flemish supporter.
So it would seem that Jacob, or one of his heirs, then managed to lose this royal trinket in the hunting field. I try to picture the scene as a distraught Flemish billionaire and umpteen flunkies grovel around in the Cheshire mud looking frantically for the boss's priceless gift from the Sovereign.
Now, 650 years later, it belongs to Mr Wood and he will be in London on Thursday to bid farewell to the find of a lifetime (he will share the proceeds with the farmer, David Ford).
"I'll be rather sorry to see it go," admits Mr Wood as he returns to Manley, the site of his triumph. "It's become part of my life." So what will he do next? "Oh, I'm off with the club on Sunday. You never know what's down there."
Indeed, you don't.
