The Hoxne Hoard

The account

Eric Lawes went into the field to find his friend's lost hammer. The detector sang over something else: a Roman strongbox, packed in the last desperate years of Britain's empire, fifteen thousand coins, gold bracelets, silver spoons engraved with the names of people who never came back for them. It is the richest Roman treasure ever raised from British soil, and the British Museum displays all of it. Including, in its own case, the hammer.

How it was found

• In 1992 a Suffolk farmer lost a hammer in his field and asked his friend Eric Lawes to look for it with a metal detector. Lawes found the richest Roman treasure in Britain instead, and the lost hammer turned up too, and went into the British Museum with the gold.