About Us
The Stour Valley Search and Recovery Club has over 30 years experience of responsible detecting, the original club started in 1984 and we are proud to say that four of the founder members are still active club members. We are a small club (by modern standards) of about 28 members all of whom are committed to maintaining the club’s high standards of adopted rules. From the club comes a wealth of experience and knowledge based on years of detecting finds and close liaison with the Portable Antiquities Scheme officers. We hold monthly meetings to share our finds with other members and the PAS officer (the PAS officer is an honorary member of our club) and we have an annual meeting to decide the winners of our coin and artifact of the year awards. In 2009 the club received an award for an “Outstanding Contribution to the Archaeology of Dorset”.
In 2015 we also won the Dorset Archaeological Award for the Tarrant Valley Lunula find and subsequent project which linked the detecting find to the PAS and archeaological investigations and subsequent investigations to locate the final parts of the lunula
Over the years there have been several significant finds, Durotrigian gold and silver stater hoards, Roman Denarii hoard, a rare Byzantine coin of Leo IV, several gold finds and most recently a hoard of Ancient British silver staters and several Bronze Age items – spearheads, an axehead, a gold lunula and a gilded bust Corpus Christi (the latter being donated and displayed in a church close to the find spot). Our most recent significant find is a purse loss from the 16th Century consisting of 2 James I gold coins and several silver coins of Elizabeth I and a Silver Seal Matrix ,and most recently found was a very rare 1483 Gold Angel coin of Edward V
Charity Donations. So far for the year 2015 -16 we have donated to our three chosen charities; The Air Ambulance received £125, Forest Holme £75 and Julia’s House £50. The money is raised by monthly raffles and selling of scrap metal found on the fields. Dave Kirchin is the dedicated person who sorts and sells the scrap in what can only be described as a very time consuming process. the last sale of scrap raised £160 towards our donation, well done Dave! Current update for money raised through scrap for 2016/17 is £400.72, not bad for a load of scrap!
We are keen to promote the benefits of responsible metal detecting with all club members registered with the Association for Metal Detecting Sport and we also donate large sums of money to our chosen charities through activities within the club.
The Committee:
Chairperson – John Earley
Vice Chair – David Eagles
Secretary and Website Admin – Tony Player
Treasurer – David Spohr
Sites Officer – John Hinchcliffe
Press Officer – Angela Kernan
Committee member In general – John Slade