Two metal detector enthusiasts who conspired to illegally sell a cache of Anglo Saxon coins which help change our understanding of Alfred the Great have been jailed for more than five years.
Roger Pilling, 75, and Craig Best, 46, were caught in an undercover police sting trying to sell coins, likely buried by a Viking, which should have been declared as treasure and handed to the crown.
The two men were found guilty after a two-week criminal trial at Durham crown court.
On Thursday, Judge James Adkin said he was confident that the coins were part of a larger undeclared hoard found in Leominster in 2015, known as the Herefordshire hoard.
Sentencing them for offences of conspiracy to sell criminal property and possession of criminal property, he jailed them for five years and two months each.
The judge told them the offences were aggravated by their plan to sell the coins abroad, saying: “Had they left this country, they would have been likely to be lost to this nation for ever.”
The monetary value of the coins has been estimated at £766,000, but their historical value is arguably far higher and more difficult to quantify.
The judge said the coins had “immense historical significance” while Gareth Williams, the curator of early medieval coins at the British Museum, said: “The coins literally enable us to rewrite history.”
The reason for that is the untold story they tell of the relationship between Alfred, king of Wessex, and Ceolwulf II, king of Mercia, in the late ninth century.
Ceolwulf is barely mentioned in history books, with accounts suggesting he was little more than a puppet for the Vikings. The coins tell a different story, showing how the two rulers stood shoulder to shoulder as allies.
They suggest a need to reappraise the narrative of Alfred the Great, a ruler celebrated as the hero who almost single-handedly saved England from Viking rule. He has been celebrated through history as a ruler with generosity and mercy, the man who let the cakes burn as he lost himself in plotting defeat of the Vikings.
Williams said: “I’m not disputing his greatness. But I think there’s a level of ruthlessness and manipulation of the facts that goes along with that. So he can be great and still not a terribly nice man.”
The judge described Pilling, from Loveclough, Lancashire, as the “brains behind the operation”. He said he accepted Pilling, having run an engineering business, was a man of good character and Best had a young family who relied on him.
Sharon Watson, defending Pilling, said he had been a “hard-working, industrious family man and a kind person” who delayed his retirement after his factory burned down to ensure his employees had jobs.
Stephen Garbett, defending Best, from Bishop Auckland, County Durham, said he was also hard-working, and a man who ran a business with three employees.
Garbett said: “His family are devastated by what has happened, he now has to deal with it.”
Durham constabulary launched its investigation, Operation Fantail, after being contacted by the University of Cambridge.
Neither Pilling or Best, both metal detectorists and coin enthusiasts, were ever accused of finding the coins themselves. The two men who did find the hoard in 2015 and failed to legally declare it were themselves jailed in 2019 for 10 and eight years.
