Steve Brown brings us the inside story of the Dovedale Hoard.
In early July this year Dovedale hit the worldwide headlines following the release to the press of the details of a major discovery of late Iron Age and Roman coins in a cave on National Trust property in the Peak District. A climber, sheltering from the rain in Reynard’s Kitchen Cave, discovered four coins which eventually led to a full-scale excavation of the site itself and eventually 26 coins were unearthed by archaeologists. All the headlines focused on the treasure and its discovery, yet this was just a small part of what turned out to be a major project for the National Trust in terms of planning, logistics, conservation and, ultimately, public benefit…