Finds

1. South Warwickshire Battlefield Survey. Members' Code of Conduct (excerpt)

We search on private land only, and only with the landowner's written permission. Permission is granted to the group and lists every member by name. Ministry of Defence land is closed and may not be entered under any circumstances, including to fetch back a dog.

Every find is entered in the log: date, field, depth, description. Finds are handed to the coordinator, who passes them through the Finds Liaison Officer to the Portable Antiquities Scheme for the national database. A strip counts as searched once it has been walked in both directions, crosswise.

No detecting at night. Anyone who digs at night is a nighthawk, and the group will not work with them again.

Coordinator: Gavin Turner.

2. Finds log of O. Price, October 2025 (excerpts)

Saturday, October 4. Pickering's field, lower ground, strip along the hedge. Musket ball, lead, white crust of oxide, at nineteen centimeters. Brass button. Strip walked crosswise, closed.

Sunday, October 5. Strip by the old oak. Two balls, one flattened on one side. Horseshoe. Closed.

Tuesday, October 14, after my round. Hedge strip again. Signal right at the edge, ball at twenty-two centimeters. Strip was closed on the 4th.

The 15th. Same place, two balls, a hand's width down.

The 17th. Same place, a ball on the stubble, lying on top. Dry on top, earth underneath.

3. Email correspondence between O. Price and G. Turner

Price, October 17, 9:40 p.m. Gavin, hi. I'm attaching the log because I've stopped believing myself. I closed the hedge strip on the 4th. You know how I walk it, slow and crosswise, coil kept low. On Tuesday I went back just to check the margin and pulled a ball from the very edge of the signal. Then every day the same thing, only shallower, and today it was lying on the stubble and I nearly trod on it. The balls are real, old, crusted, you've seen a hundred like them. At the post office they're saying again that my round is going to be merged with the Kineton one. On Monday Pickering asked me whether I'm renewing the lease on the cottage. We sign the papers at his place on Friday the 24th at six, provided, as he put it, everything's all right with me. I said it was. The dog by the post office, the ginger one, barks at me now. Twenty years I've carried biscuits in my pocket for her. I paid for the cottage on time this month, there's enough for the car till spring, so don't you worry, everything's fine with me apart from that hedge strip.

Turner, October 18, 8:12 a.m. Morning, Owen. One thing at a time. You don't get frost heave in October without frost, and nobody has plowed that field since August, so it's a person. Somebody is burying old balls out of his own box and watching other people get excited. It happens at rallies all the time. Half our group keep oxidized balls in biscuit tins. Mine, the one with the tooth marks that everybody passed around on Saturday, still isn't in my tin, by the way, and I'm sure I put it there myself. I've already taken in your finds from the 4th and 5th. The officer logged them without a single question. All she said was that the oxide on them looked right, about three hundred years' worth, and she asked who in our group writes down depth so neatly. You go out there alone, every day, and, sorry, from the outside it looks odd. So here's the deal. On Thursday the 23rd, at ten in the morning, I'm driving the group's finds to Warwick, to the Finds Liaison Officer. Bring everything you've dug up since the 14th. You don't bring it, and I'll have to take you off Pickering's permission, or he'll pull it for all of us.

Price, October 19, 10:05 p.m. I'll bring it. But listen to what happened yesterday. I walked the field track Pickering drives along, and there were balls lying in the rut, eleven of them, one about every forty paces, all the way to the gate. Past the gate it's the road, cars, nothing. And this morning one was lying by my garden gate. From his gate to my house is over a mile, and on that whole stretch, not one. I walked it twice, watching my feet. In the evening I sat in the kitchen with the box in front of me and stayed there till midnight. All these years I've been teaching beginners that whatever comes out of the ground belongs to history. Fine. If it's a person, I'll find him. I bought a camera in Banbury, the kind people strap to trees for badgers. I'll hang it on the gate.

Price, October 21, 6:50 a.m. The camera's been up two nights. It goes off for anything, the cat, a hedgehog, me taking the bins out. The first night there were three pictures: cat, cat and a fox. At six in the morning there was a ball by the gate, and in the pictures the path stayed empty all night. So I did what I should have done straight away. Yesterday after my round I took the box, all forty balls, drove to the lower ground and buried them back in the hedge strip, at the same depth, twenty centimeters, and filled the holes in, and trod the soil down. It was getting dark. Pickering went past on his quad bike, looked at me and didn't wave. I was on my knees in the stubble with a trowel. From the outside it must have looked like I was praying. I gave them back. This morning they were lying by the gate, all of them, in a little heap, dry, with earth on the bottom, and one more on top. Forty-one, Gavin. I counted twice and put them back in the box. The camera didn't go off once all night.

Turner, October 21, 9:30 a.m. Owen, you buried finds back in the ground? You realize I'm the one who has to explain that in Warwick? All right. Thursday, ten a.m., my garage. Everything you've got. And stay off the field on the night of the 22nd. You know what date it is. Every year people turn up there with lights and cameras, and I don't need anybody filming you out there.

Price, October 22, 11:10 p.m. I won't go. I'm done looking for anything, Gavin, and done checking. I've put the detector on charge, locked it in the cupboard under the stairs and hung the key on the nail by the stove. I've taped the box shut, all forty-one, and left it by the door so I don't forget it in the morning. Thursday at ten I'll be at yours. Friday at six I sign the lease at the Pickerings'. I've already ironed a shirt. I've lived in this cottage since 2005, back in old Pickering's day, and every autumn I take them the first find from their field. Last year it was a shoe buckle. Mrs. Pickering hung it on a nail over the stove and tells visitors it came off a cavalryman. Off to bed, I'm up at six for work.

4. Voice messages from J. Pickering to his neighbor, Maggie Calder, night of October 22 (transcript)

12:31 a.m. Maggie, you awake? The dog's howling, I'm going out to the sheep. There are lights on the lower ground. Those camera people again. I'll ring you if anything happens.

12:36 a.m. I'm at the gate. Maggie, there's a lot of them. They're standing in rows, straight, like on parade. Nobody's talking. The light's coming from above, from the sky, low and even. Their hands are empty. A hundred of them, maybe more. I'm not going any closer.

12:37 a.m. Maggie, it's quiet here. Dead quiet. No wind, no rooks, no road. All I can hear is my own breathing and some kind of beeping, thin, like an alarm clock in the next room.

12:39 a.m. There's one walking about with a headlamp. With a metal detector, I can hear it beeping. He's going between the rows and bending down, digging at their feet with a little trowel. Maggie, it's Price. The postman. That's his jacket, the blue one, and he walks crabwise, the way he always walks my field. He's putting something in his bag. And they're watching him. All of them looking down at him, turning their heads wherever he goes.

12:41 a.m. I called out to him. He didn't turn around. Maggie. They turned around. All at once. All at once, toward me.

12:44 a.m. I'm in the car. Doors locked. God knows what I'm putting all this on your phone for. They've got no faces, Maggie, I mean they've got faces, only I can't see them, all I can see is that they're turned this way. He's still digging. Beeping. Don't ring back, I'm not leaving here till it's light, my hands won't work.

7:10 a.m. Nobody. No tire tracks. Little holes on the lower ground, neatly filled in. I counted. Forty-one. The sheep are standing in the far corner of the top field, bunched together, and won't come to the feeder. The dog won't go outside, he's lying under the table. I'm calling the police. And Maggie, don't send this on to anyone yet. I've known Price twenty years, he rents the cottage off me, I gave him permission myself.

5. G. Turner to O. Price, October 23, 11:20 a.m.

Owen, I waited for you till half past ten. Pickering rang me. I don't know what to say to you. He's withdrawn permission for the whole group. Call me.

6. G. Turner's message to the group chat, October 26, 10:15 a.m.

Hi all. Pickering has withdrawn permission, the Radway outings are off till spring, maybe for good. Any of you who were out there on the night of the 22nd, even with a camera, even just to look, message me privately. I just need to know. Bring your October finds to my garage on Saturday. Leave Owen alone, things are hard for him at work right now.

7. Letter from O. Price to G. Turner, November 25, 5:20 a.m.

Gavin, this is the last thing I'll write to you about the field, and I'm not expecting an answer. Pickering sent me copies of his messages. The police came to see me on Friday at a quarter to six, just as I was shutting the gate in my ironed shirt to go over and sign. He didn't renew the lease. A letter came on Monday: I'm to be out of the cottage by Christmas. Mrs. Pickering took the buckle down off its nail and gave it to the constable along with everything else I'd brought them over twenty years, and he put it all in a single ziplock bag.

That night I was at home. I went to bed at half past ten and woke at six to the alarm. The key was on its nail, the cupboard was locked. The detector was where I'd left it, only the battery was flat, and I'd charged it full. The box was by the door, taped up the way I'd taped it. I picked it up and knew straight away. It was light. I cut the tape, and it was empty. That's why I didn't come at ten. I had nothing to bring you. Afterward I never asked myself where they'd gone. I knew. Pickering counted as many holes as there had been balls in the box.

For three mornings the mat was bare, the first time in a week, and I even had time to think that was the end of it. Since the 26th they've been coming again every morning, one at a time. I open the door and there it is on the mat, dry, with its white crust, and the mat pressed in a little underneath it. I write them down, out of habit, in the same log. I tried sitting in the hall on a stool from three o'clock and never once saw it happen. It was lying wherever I had last let my eyes drop.

One more thing, since this is the last letter. On the morning of the 23rd I had dirt under my nails. At the time I thought it was from the hedge strip, from the evening I buried the box. I still think so.

They merged my round. From December I'm on sorting. The dog by the post office doesn't bark anymore. Now when I walk past, she drops onto her belly and crawls away under the van. Anyone in the group asks, tell them Price packed it in.

The log is attached.

8. Entry on the last leaf of the Pickering farm account book (copy given to the compiler by J. Pickering)

At Christmastide, on the Saturday, past midnight, I and Ned the shepherd were keeping the sheep under the hill, and we saw in the air those that fought here in October, and heard their drums, and so it was for some three hours. Others that were there went by night to Kineton and roused Master Wood and the minister and swore to all of it. After, there came from London a printed book of this wonder, and therein is set down all as it was, save one thing. That one thing I write here, for Ned and I told no man of it. Among the slain there walked a man like to neither side, in a short blue garment, and on his brow burned a small fire, and in his hand was a staff that sang when he bowed it to the earth. He stooped at the feet of the slain and took somewhat from them and put it in his scrip, and the slain looked upon him as men look upon one of their own. Ned called out to him, and he did not turn.