This Face-Horse coin was one of 14 found during a rally of metal detectorists in 1996. It is tiny, measuring only 1.1cm in diameter. It must have taken great craftsmanship to stamp out the image of a face on one side and a horse on the reverse. 

 

There were no banks in the Iron Age, so in times of trouble valuables were buried in the ground.

​

At the time of the Face-Horse deposit in about AD60, warfare was raging across Norfolk and Suffolk. The Iceni Queen Boudica and her army was battling against the Roman invader – a war they eventually lost.

 

This small hoard contained ten silver Iceni coins and four Roman coins. So who would have owned both forms of currency – an Iceni or a Roman? It could have been either, as coins were used for trading. Romans were definitely stationed in the area, and one theory is that the hoard could have been a Roman soldier's pension pot. If so, he didn't survive to collect it. No container has been found for the coins, but if a bag was used it might have simply rotted away.

 

Diss Museum purchased the Face-Horse coin from the Department of National Heritage, London, in 1998,  The museum owns five other coins from the same hoard: three Iceni, one dating from the Roman Empire and one from Emperor Tiberius. Their sizes vary from 1.2cm to 2cm.

 

In 1997 a much larger hoard was discovered in Forncett, near to the first. Again, it involved mixed Iceni and Roman examples – bringing the total to 381 silver coins. At least five other similar coin hoards have been found in South Norfolk dating from the Roman/Iceni conflict. 

 

Government statistics show that Norfolk is the best place to dig up buried treasure. However, metal detectorists have to get permission from the farmer, share their profits with him or her, and report any valuable finds to the authorities.

​

You can't just grab a Roman's pension pot.