An iron age gold collar worth more than £350,000 that was found by an amateur metal detectorist in a muddy field in Nottinghamshire was described yesterday as the best find of its kind in half a century.
Iron age gold collar
© Oli Scarff/GettyFabulous ... Iron age gold collar.

"I was only in the field because a customer kept me late," Maurice Richardson, a tree surgeon from Newark, said yesterday. "Normally I'd never want to go into this field because a plane crashed there in the last war, and the whole place is littered with bits of metal."

The first beep from his detector was indeed a chunk of wartime scrap metal, but as he bent down to discard it, his machine gave a louder signal. Expecting to find a bigger chunk of fuselage, he instead discovered the 2,200-year-old collar.

The piece, a near twin of one already in the British Museum, was the most spectacular of 1,257 finds reported over the last three years. Treasure reports have increased every year since the Portable Antiquities scheme was set up to record finds by the public in England and Wales.

"It's a fabulous thing, the best Iron Age find in 50 years," said JD Hill, head of the British Museum's iron age department. "When I first saw a picture of it I thought somebody was pulling my leg because it is so like the Sedgeford torc in our collection that it must have been made by the same hand.

"What is fascinating about it is that it turned up where no torc should be - to put it mildly, the Newark region is not known for major high-status iron age finds. This wasn't in a grave, wasn't on a hilltop - it opens up a whole new chapter of the history of this area."

Richardson has been metal detecting, not entirely to the delight of his wife, since he first spent £70 on a detector instead of buying a carpet for their new house just after they were married 40 years ago.

He should now have enough money for new wall-to-wall after sharing the reward with the landowner.

Unusually, the torc has been acquired by his local museum in Newark, after heroic fundraising efforts. Most such finds go to national museums. Sarah Dawes, head of leisure and culture at Newark and Sherwood district council, said: "I took one look and rang my chief executive to say, sit tight, don't leave the office, we've got something to tell you."

For archaeologists, professional and amateur, the greater treasure announced yesterday was the reprieve of the Portable Antiquities scheme itself. Last year there was an outcry in the profession when the scheme almost became collateral damage in swingeing cuts imposed by the government.