Welsh detectorists George Powell and Layton Davies, who discovered Viking treasure worth up to £12m, are the subject of a new BBC Cymru podcast.
Fool’s Gold tells the story of how they found the treasure bungled their way through a criminal plan, hiding and trying to sell it, lying about what they’d found, and bragging to their peers, arousing suspicions that spread all the way to the British Museum.
The hoard consists of gold jewellery, silver ingots and hundreds of Anglo-Saxon coins, believed to be buried more than 1,000 years ago by Viking warriors in Herefordshire and could date all the way back to the fifth century.
The Herefordshire Museum Service called it one of the most significant early medieval treasures ever discovered in Britain, and historians believe the unearthing could rewrite the story of King Alfred’s reign and of Britain itself.
The pair could have become very rich and been celebrated as heroes in museums across the land, but their actions led to investigators picking up the clumsy clues left by the detectorists and eventually arrested them.
The men were given prison sentences, and while the bulk of the treasure still hasn’t been recovered, they were given a confiscation order and told to repay over a half a million pounds each or return to jail.
Earlier this year, George failed to appear in court and has been on the run since, with a warrant issued for his arrest.
Fool’s Gold, launched today, is narrated by Welsh actress Aimee-Ffion Edwards, who’s well acquainted with the world of metal detecting from her role in the BBC’s Detectorists. The series is produced by BBC Studios Audio.
Executive Producer for BBC Studios Audio, James Robinson, said: “This is a real-life tragicomedy. We were fascinated with the story of how two seemingly ordinary men went from the luckiest treasure hunters on earth, to Newport’s most wanted. We hope listeners are just as gripped by the story as we were.”
With detectorists responsible for 70 percent of archaeological finds, Fool’s Gold will also tackle wider questions about the history that lies buried beneath our feet, who owns it and who gets to profit from it.
The first two episodes of Fool’s Gold are available now on BBC Sounds, with the remaining six episodes launching weekly.
