The Grouville Hoard is a hoard of an estimated 70,000 late Iron Age and Roman coins discovered in June 2012. They were found in a field at an undisclosed location in the parish of Grouville on the east coast of Jersey in the Channel Islands by metal detectorists Reg Mead and Richard Miles.
It is the largest hoard ever found in Jersey, and the first major archaeological find made by metal detectorists on the island.
After learning that a farmer had discovered many silver coins in an earthenware pot while removing a tree from a hedgerow a few years prior, Mead and Miles began metal detecting in the region where the treasure was described in the early 1980s.
It took them almost 30 years to find the trove, though, because they didn’t know the exact position of the find and the farm’s current owner only permitted metal detecting once a year for a few hours after the crops were harvested.
In early 2012, Mead and Miles initially found 60 silver and one gold Iron Age coins, possibly minted by the Curiosolitae tribe at Saint-Malo in France.
Subsequent detecting by Mead and Miles in the area of the initial find led them to discover a huge mass of Iron Age and Roman coins embedded in clay.
The legal status of the coins is unknown because Jersey lacks a legislative framework for dealing with treasure finds, similar to the Treasure Act 1996 in the United Kingdom, and the law of treasure trove may no longer be applicable there.
The discovery has been reported to the Receiver General of JerseyAs of 2015, the hoard is on display at La Hougue Bie Museum.
