WHEN archaeologists or metal detectorists discover important groups of coins there is an established procedure to evaluate and record them.

A good example is the Furness Hoard of Viking era silver coins which is on show at the Dock Museum, Barrow, after being reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

This has not always been the case and many hoards in Victorian times, or earlier, were broken up for sale or melted for the gold or silver they contained.Brief records of many of these forgotten finds are starting to emerge from research using digitised national and regional newspapers.

How the papers gave up their secrets was described by Dr Stephen Briggs in a talk at the Shrewsbury conference of the British Association of Numismatic Societies.

He said the online British Newspaper Archive from 1700 to the present day had more than 15m pages covering 650 publications.

Dr Briggs said: "I'm always looking for nuggets."

A study of newspaper reports has found mention of 1,500 otherwise unrecorded post-Roman hoards in Britain and Ireland.

These include 30 new finds of Viking coins and 140 from the period of the English Civil War in the 17th century.

In the last three years he has found records of 25 previously unknown coin finds in Cumbria and 67 in Lancashire.

You can find out more about the work of the Portable Antiquites Scheme in reporting and recording finds can be found at https://finds.org.uk/.

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Rare coin finds have always hit the headlines(www.nwemail.co.uk/Rare-coin-finds-have-always-hit-the-headlines-53a879d6-1724-4cca-b9e3-2a59165c0b14-ds)