Record Bronze Age axehead hoard found in Dorset

A coach driver discovered Britain's largest hoard of Bronze Age axeheads while waiting for a party of school-children at a Dorset farm.

Tom Peirce, 60, asked the farm’s owner if he could use his metal detector in one of the fields during his lunchbreak. Within minutes he heard a loud beep and found part of a bronze axe.

Over the next three days Mr Peirce and two other metal detectorists unearthed more than 500 items of Bronze Age metalwork, including 268 complete axeheads. The axes, buried at three separate locations more than 50 metres apart, could be worth tens of thousands of pounds, which Mr Peirce would share with the farm's owner, Alfie O'Connell.

Posted by David on January 22, 2008 2:28 PM