Survey of Colne Priory

The club received a request for an urgent survey of an area being stripped at Colne Priory.

Mark and I went there to meet the owner on Sunday and realised that by urgent he meant the next day so we asked John Auld if he could join us and spent 6 hours detecting literally as the digger removed the top soil.

It was hot work and the ground was very compact so digging wasn’t easy. We found a hammered coin each and John found part of a gold gilt on silver iconographic ring.

The owner said that he wanted everything we found to go to a local museum so in effect we were doing this for the love of history but when it is finished I will talk to the owner about land for club digs.

The site of the Priory has so much history and a Time Team episode was held there in 2005. I stood on the footprint of the building and it was huge, there was also a church at some point and the owner said there were estimated to be 10,000 bodies buried there.

Here are some photos from the day.