The trial of Mary Stuart at Fotheringhay Castle from a drawing in Beale’s MSS.

This is a sketch of the trial scene which accompanied the account of the proceedings drawn up by Robert Beale, the clerk of the council.

These two miniature portraits of Mary Stuart and Francois , Dauphin of France are part of a series of the family of Henri  II and Catherine de’Medicis.

In this miniature she is represented in a rich black dress , slashed with white and wearing a black hat or bonnet- a l’Italienne with diamond ornaments and white feather

When you have located a target and then pinpointed it with the search coil, the last thing you want to do is damage the find by digging and hitting it with your spade or trowel.

Its best to start digging about 6 inches away from the target and dig towards the spot of maximum signal strength.

Some detectorists use electronic probes – these are hand held detectors which are useful when searching – they enable you to locate a find within a hole without unnecessary digging.

For grassland its worth investing in a sharp knife to remove a plug of soil around a signal (but be aware of the law concerning offensive weapons!)

If your signal disappears when you dig, check that the find has not slipped back into the hole – or that it is not stuck on the back of your spade. Anomalous signals can be caused by pieces of coke or loose cabling on your detector.

You should always fill the holes in afterwards – many landowners make this a condition when giving permission to detectorists to search their land. Unfilled holes can be dangerous to livestock – always make a point of leaving the site in the condition you found it.

Metal-detecting started to become a popular hobby in the 1970s when lighter and less expensive machines became available. Since then it has become a pastime that enthrals all ages, including children who go out detecting with their families at the weekend, and retired people enjoying the exercise and excitement through the week. At the moment there are probably about 30,000 active detector users in England. That’s a lot of people, and a lot of finds – probably about 400,000 a year!

Finds can be from almost any period in history when they had metal. This means you could find a lead shot ball (from a gun) from 300 years ago, a Roman coin from 2000 years ago, or even a rare Bronze Age axe head from 3000 years ago! The main problem is telling this exciting treasure from all the rubbish, because the soil is stuffed full of bits of agricultural machinery and rusty iron nails. Luckily, that’s quite easy to do because most metal-detectors have what’s called a ‘discriminator’ which can tell whether the metal is iron, bronze, or even gold. But despite that, metal-detecting isn’t really about treasure in the usual sense. It isn’t all gold jewellery and pieces of eight.

Most of the things that detectorists find are broken, rusty or corroded, and quite small, but that doesn’t mean they have little value. All finds have the potential to tell us about where people lived or were buried in the past, what they were doing and why. Artefacts may also be beautiful because of the quality of the craftsmanship or fascinating because they are very different from the modern objects we are used to seeing today. As with many things, the value is in the eye of the beholder.

Metal-detecting is quite easy to do. It’s possible to buy a metal-detector for as little as £100, though the most expensive ones can be anything up to £800. You just have to have a lot of patience and a strong arm because you might be waving the detector over the land for hours! The hard part is getting permission to use someone’s land, because without that permission you’re breaking the law. In fact, during the 1980s, there was a massive campaign to make metal-detecting completely illegal, as it is in many other countries. This is because some archaeologists considered metal-detecting to be ‘stealing heritage’, and they even suggested detectorists were ‘pillagers’.

It is still true that some people raid fields and even archaeological sites with metal-detectors in the middle of the night, leaving giant holes, and stealing objects. It is very difficult to know how many of these people there are, but they probably number in the thousands. Only a few are ever caught and brought to justice. However there are also many law-abiding detector users who enjoy the discovery of ancient artefacts, learning about history, and having fun together.

All this fuss in the 1980s eventually lead to the Treasure Act in 1996 which, among other things, set up the Portable Antiquities Scheme to make it easier for the law-abiding detectorists to report their objects. There is a Portable Antiquities Scheme Officer for each county, and they borrow objects for recording, making a description and a photograph or drawing available on their online database: www.finds.org.uk. This site can be searched by anyone – try it! This means that everyone can have a chance to enjoy the objects, rather just the person who found it. What happens to the artefacts is then up to the owner, but at least some of the information about the objects will be saved for future generations, because once these finds are gone, they will never be replaced.

It’s thought that in about 30 years time, those archaeological sites that are currently in ploughed fields will be gone, churned up in the soil, scattered and broken down into tiny pieces. No more treasure. The past will be lost. So in a way, the law-abiding metal-detectorists are doing everyone a favour by recovering the artefacts that would otherwise be ploughed away. Some of the most dedicated detector users even work closely with archaeologists to uncover sites such as Anglo-Saxon cemeteries from 1500 years ago in order that they can be properly looked at and recorded. It’s such a shame that, as with all things that promise gold, there will always be those who are only interested in how much they can sell the objects for and will willingly destroy sites to get at them. By stealing these objects they prevent other people from enjoying them. The thieves are so preoccupied with treasure and financial value they forget that other people treasure and value these objects too.

First published in the Streetwise magazine with the theme of ‘treasure’, December 2004

Mary Chester Kadwell website and information

This small portrait in miniature is one of the ornamental paintings in the illuminated “Livred’ Heures” (Book of Hours) which belonged to Catherine de’ Medicis the mother in law of Mary Stuart.

It shows Francois, Dauphin of France and Mary Stuart.

This is part of a series of portraitts of all the children of Henri II and Catherine de’Medicis and the wives of those who were then married.

These pages reflect the history of battlefields and have been written simply because of the authors interest in the subject. A Scottish Battlefields Register is in preparation at Historic Scotland, following public disquiet over recent development proposals at sites such as Bannockburn (1314) and Sherrifmuir (1715). The Register is expected to serve as guidance for planning authorities, mirroring the English Battlefields Register which was introduced in 1995. The English document has had only mixed success.

The Scottish Register is likely to include a wider range of engagements than the English list, which only includes major battles (not skirmishes) whose boundaries can be defined. The Scottish version is expected to range from well-defined battles such as Bannockburn or Culloden (1746) to those with only broadly understood locations such as Largs on the Clyde estuary, where Norse power was defeated by a Scots army in 1263. It will also contain some minor skirmishes which formed part of a longer conflict, such as that between the McLeods and MacDonalds of Skye

Battles where there is no convincing evidence will be excluded

This may disappoint some campaigners, whose pressure has recently stopped development at the alleged sites of two `patriotic’ battles which historians believe did not take place – the Scots king Kenneth MacAlpin’s victory over the Picts supposedly at Stirling in 843, and the `Battle of William Wallace’s Tree’ near Glasgow, where the 13th century Braveheart hero is said to have woken up to find himself attacked by five armed thugs whom he beat off with his bare hands.Genuine battlefields affected by unsightly new buildings include Prestonpans (1745) in East Lothian which is now covered by industrial development and a railway line.Bannockburn, near Stirling, is currently threatened by a mixed housing and industrial scheme, while holiday chalets have been proposed for Sherrifmuir, also near Stirling.

According to Noel Fojut at Historic Scotland, once a draft register has been drawn up it will go to the Scottish Parliament for approval. `They will then have to decide whether we need any new legislation to make it work,’ he said