People who found their fortune in a field

When Derek McLennan’s metal detector began bleeping in the middle of a field of Dumfries and Galloway, little did he know it would set him up for life. His find – including silver bracelets, brooches, a gold ring, a Christian cross and a bird-shaped pin – was revealed to be the richest collection of rare Viking artifacts ever found in the UK. Now he is set to receive a cool £1.98million.

When Peter Whatling lost his hammer on farmland near Hoxne, Suffolk, the best thing he ever did was to ask a friend with a metal detector to help out. He found something remarkable – 14,780 gold and silver coins, along with 200 jewellery items,ornaments and tableware. It was all part of the accumulated wealth of the affluent family of Roman Aurelius Ursicinus. The 1992 discovery brought the two men a finder’s fee of £1.75m.

A stash of Viking treasure earned father and son detectorists David and Andrew Whelan a tidy £500,000. The Whelans found the 600 plundered coins in a Harrogate field in 2007. The coins – from lands ranging from central Asia to north Africa – were sold to the Yorkshire Museum for £1 million.

It was the find of a lifetime when Michael Webb and his son discovered a huge gold chalice in a waterlogged bog in County Tipperary, Ireland. They unearthed the chalice, a bronze bowl, silver paten and hoop and a liturgical strainer dating back to the 10th to 12th centuries. David Booth as he headed out with his new metal detector – and stumbled across four Iron Age necklaces. He found the ancient jewellery, which dates from between 300BC and 100BC, hidden six inches beneath the surface in a field near Stirling. Booth was rewarded £462,000 from the National Museum of Scotland.

An 18-carat gold cross, dating back to the 7th century and worth at least £25,000, was found 12 inches below the surface in a field in Nottinghamshire. Retired electrician Cliff Bradshaw had spent more than a year searching an area of the Kent countryside, convinced it was on a former Saxon settlement. He struck gold in 2010 when he dug up a golden cup, dating to 1700-1500BC.

The British Museum paid £520,000 for the extremely rare treasure