Beaumaris Castle, Menai Strait

Britarch

The JiscMail Britarch forum closed on the 3rd April 2023. As closure approached without any replacment materialising, this webpage was created by Mike Haseler together with the forum. However things got strange: not only did the CBA shut down the old Britarch discussion forum, but posts informing users about new site(s) were blocked. That led to ...

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Recently on: https://groups.io/g/Britarch

Dog walkers discovered 2,000-year-old beach footprints (Lunan Bay beach, Montrose, Angus)

Archaeologists have described their race against time to document rare 2,000-year-old footprints uncovered on the Angus coast before the winter storms which had revealed them also wiped them away.

The human and animal prints were discovered by dog walkers Jenny Snedden and Ivor Campbell in ancient clay deposits at Lunan Bay beach near Montrose.

They had lain undiscovered beneath sand dunes but were exposed when they were scoured away by strong winds and high tides.

A team from Aberdeen University was despatched to document the scene, stopping to pick up supplies like plaster of Paris from craft shops on the way, before the site was destroyed by the weather forever.

Posted on 20 February 2026 | 10:43 am

'Smiling' fossil discovered on Holy Island

Christine Clark, 64, was hunting for fossils during a Boxing Day walk on Holy Island, Northumberland when something caught her eye.

A tiny pebble seemed to be "smiling at me", she said. "It looked like someone's fake teeth."

...

 

Christine holidays every year to Northumberland with her husband Gerard where, she said, they regularly go hunting for Cuddy's beads on the Holy Island.

A spit of land with only 150 residents and cut off twice daily by the sea, it is considered the cradle of early English Christianity.

The "beads" are fossilised parts of the stem of a marine animal called a crinoid, but they earnt their nickname from St Cuthbert, considered the patron saint of the North of England.

Posted on 19 February 2026 | 1:54 pm

History professor finds huge Iron Age hoard (Bury St Edmunds)

A history professor with a passion for metal detecting uncovered a hoard of 18 Iron Age gold coins.

The coins are the largest known find from the reign of Iron Age king Dubnovellaunos, who ruled the Trinovantes tribe what is now mostly Essex and Suffolk, between 25BC and AD10.

Prof Tom Licence, 46, from the University of East Anglia, says he has family history in Bury St Edmunds and likes to "imagine that the coins were buried by one of my ancestors".

Known as The Bury St Edmunds Hoard, it is being auctioned off and is expected to make £25,000.

Posted on 15 February 2026 | 9:55 am

Iron Age hoard to go on public display this summer (N. Yorks.)

A collection of more than 800 Iron Age artefacts found in a North Yorkshire field will go on public display for the first time.

The Melsonby Hoard is believed to be one of the UK's largest finds from the period, and, following a fundraising campaign, was acquired by the Yorkshire Museum.

The collection, which features chariot wheels, cauldrons and spears, will displayed in an exhibition at the museum in York from May onwards.

Posted on 11 February 2026 | 8:22 pm

British Museum to keep pendant linked to Henry VIII

The British Museum has successfully raised £3.5m to keep a gold pendant linked to King Henry VIII's marriage to his first wife, Katherine (also Catherine) of Aragon.

The central London museum launched a fundraising appeal in October so it could permanently acquire the Tudor Heart, found by a metal detectorist in a Warwickshire field in 2019.

It has now announced that it reached its fundraising goal after receiving £360,000 in public donations and a string of donations from grants, trusts and arts organisations.

Museum director Nicholas Cullinan said: "The success of the campaign shows the power of history to spark the imagination and why objects like the Tudor Heart should be in a museum."

Posted on 10 February 2026 | 2:02 pm

Shipwreck timbers from 17th Century appear on beach (Studland Bay, Dorset)

Part of a historic shipwreck has been revealed on a beach in the wake of Storm Chandra.

The exposed timbers were discovered at the National Trust-owned Studland Bay, in Dorset, on 28 January.

Maritime archaeologists from Bournemouth University believe it forms a missing piece of the Swash Channel wreck that was first discovered in the 1990s in a key shipping approach to Poole Harbour.

It is thought that the wreck is most likely the Fame from Hoorn, an armed Dutch merchant ship that ran aground and sank in 1631.

Posted on 9 February 2026 | 2:05 pm