April 2010. Dave Crisp was detecting on farmland near Frome in Somerset when he got a signal. Then another. Then another. Within minutes, he'd pulled out a handful of Roman coins. Most detectorists would be celebrating. Dave kept digging - and the signals kept coming.
What he'd stumbled upon was the largest hoard of Roman coins ever found in a single container in Britain: 52,503 coins weighing 160 kilograms. That's about the weight of two grown men - in coins.
Dave had been detecting for years. He knew Roman sites. He knew scattered coin losses. But this was different. The signals weren't scattered across a field - they were concentrated in one spot, layered on top of each other, going deeper than he'd ever dug before.
After recovering about a dozen coins, Dave made a crucial decision. He stopped digging. The concentration was too unusual, the depth too significant. This wasn't a casual coin loss or even a small savings hoard. Something much bigger was down there.
He reported his find to the local Finds Liaison Officer. What happened next became a masterclass in how amateur and professional archaeology can work together.
Professional archaeologists from the Somerset County Council arrived to conduct a proper excavation. What they found was extraordinary: a large pot, buried deliberately, packed tight with Roman coins spanning three decades of the late third century.
The pot itself was a standard Roman storage vessel, about the size of a large bucket. Whoever buried it had filled it completely, layer after layer of coins pressed down, then sealed and buried it about a foot underground. The sheer weight meant they couldn't have gone much deeper - carrying 160kg of coins isn't something you do casually.
Excavating took three days. Each layer was photographed, documented, and carefully lifted. The coins emerged encrusted together, some still in the positions they'd held for 1,700 years.
The hoard spans from about 253 to 305 AD - a turbulent period in Roman history known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The empire was fragmenting, emperors were being murdered with alarming regularity, and inflation was destroying the currency.
The coins themselves reflect this chaos:
The Carausius coins are particularly significant. Carausius ruled his breakaway "British Empire" from 286 to 293 AD before being murdered by his treasurer. Finding 760 of his coins in one hoard - many in excellent condition - gave historians unprecedented insight into his coinage and propaganda.
160 kilograms of coins isn't pocket money. Even accounting for the debased currency of the period, this represented serious wealth. But whose?
The leading theory is that this was a community treasury rather than one person's savings. The sheer quantity, the range of dates, and the location near what may have been a temple site suggest this could have been a religious offering - wealth dedicated to the gods and buried for safekeeping.
Alternatively, it might have been a tax collection, a military pay chest, or the accumulated wealth of a local landowner who never returned for their fortune. The third century was dangerous. Whoever buried this pot likely intended to come back. Like so many hoard depositors, they never did.
The Frome Hoard was valued at £320,250. Under the Treasure Act, this was split between Dave Crisp and the landowner. The Museum of Somerset in Taunton acquired the hoard, where it's now on permanent display.
But the value went beyond money. Dave's decision to report properly and allow professional excavation meant the hoard could be studied as a complete assemblage. Researchers identified coin types, minting patterns, and historical connections that would have been lost if the coins had been scattered into private collections.
The Frome Hoard teaches us several things:
The Frome Hoard is now one of the star attractions at the Museum of Somerset. The coins are displayed in a way that shows their original arrangement - not as individual collectibles but as the massive, concentrated deposit that Dave's detector first signalled back in 2010.