New BBC Sounds podcast, Fool’s Gold, tells the story of Welsh detectorists George Powell and Layton Davies who, in June 2015, stumbled upon a Viking treasure hoard near Leominster – estimated to be worth up to £12m – that changed the way we see British history.
The treasure consists of gold jewellery, silver ingots and hundreds of Anglo-Saxon coins, believed to be buried more than 1,000 years ago by Viking warriors in Herefordshire and could date all the way back to the fifth century. The Herefordshire Museum Service called it one of the most significant early medieval treasures ever discovered in Britain, and historians believe the unearthing could rewrite the story of King Alfred’s reign and of Britain itself.
The two detectorists who discovered the treasure could have become very rich and been celebrated as heroes in museums across the land, like the person who found a similar hoard in Oxfordshire a few months later. Instead, they bungled their way through a criminal plan, hiding the treasure and trying to sell it, lying about what they’d found, and bragging to their peers, arousing suspicions that spread all the way to the British Museum. Investigators picked up the clumsy clues left by the detectorists and eventually arrested them.
The men were handed prison sentences, and while the bulk of the treasure still hasn’t been recovered, the pair were given a confiscation order and told to repay over a half a million pounds each or return to jail. But earlier this year, George failed to appear in court and has been on the run since, with a warrant issued for his arrest.
With George a wanted man, how did their story end up in disaster, and will this highly precious hoard ever see the light of day?
Fool’s Gold, launched today, is narrated by Welsh actress Aimee-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses, Peaky Blinders and Luther), who’s well acquainted with the world of metal detecting from her role in the BBC’s Detectorists. The series is a BBC Cymru Wales commission and is produced by BBC Studios Audio.
Executive Producer for BBC Studios Audio, James Robinson, said: “This is a real-life tragicomedy. We were fascinated with the story of how two seemingly ordinary men went from the luckiest treasure hunters on earth, to Newport’s most wanted. We hope listeners are just as gripped by the story as we were.”
With detectorists responsible for 70 percent of archaeological finds, Fool’s Gold will also tackle wider questions about the history that lies buried beneath our feet; who owns it and who gets to profit from it.
The first two episodes of Fool’s Gold are available now on BBC Sounds, with the remaining six episodes launching weekly: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0kz4ny8
