Paul Lomas and his son Lewis

Myself and son Lewis age 11 set of just after first light from our home on the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District with the usual excitement and trepidation we experience every weekend when we go detecting.

We were on our way to attend a group dig with Midlands detecting days over in the neighbouring county of Staffordshire near to the village of Longnor.

When the dig started we meandered down and through the narrow strip fields finding the odd Victorian Penny, lots of .303 bullet cases and tips as is customary in Staffordshire as the place seems riddled with them.

We both wandered down to the farm located half way down the sloping fields on the way to the bottom of the valley and found a concentration of coins in the field near to the farm house, I found a Victorian Lead toy soldier and a penny cartwheel coin and Lewis found numerous coins including 5 George V pennies and a couple of Vicky pennies, some in surprisingly good condition.

Lewis shouted over to me to say he had a dug a signal but was struggling to find the target and would I help, at first I thought he was being lazy and smiled to myself as he quite often tries this one when he gets tired, but when I arrived I was surprised to see that he had dug quite a deep hole.

I scooped out the lump of clay and dropped it in front of Lewis, I watched him carefully search the clod with his pin pointer and saw him extract a small dark object from the sticky clay, he gave it a few wipes and we both looked at it, it looked to me like a tiny axe head in shape, we looked at the side profile and then the top profile and then it dawned on me that it could be a votive Axehead hence the size, I watched Lewis looking at it and was both pleased and excited for him,he didnt really at that point realise the significance of his find, I explained it to him and congratulated him and we both shook hands.

Other diggers and Tony the group organiser, all of whom confirmed my suspicions that it was indeed a Bronze Age votive axe head. On our return home I sent and email to the Staffordshire FLO with images and details of the weight and dimensions and promptly received and email back Monday morning confirming that is was indeed an early Bronze Age flat Axehead meaning that it dates from up to 2200BC making up possibly just over 4000 years old ! What a absolute bucket lister even if Lewis didn’t comprehend it at a first - He certainly does now !!