An unsung alternative to the Cotswolds: exploring Leicestershire's Welland valley

"It was a chilly Sunday in November 2000 when the gods chose to smile on Ken Wallace. The retired teacher was sweeping his metal detector across a hillside in Leicestershire's Welland valley when a series of beeps brought him up short. Digging down, he found a cache of buried coins almost two millennia old. He had chanced upon one of the UK's most important iron age hoards, totalling about 5,000 silver and gold coins."

"More than 25 years on, I'm staring at Ken's find at the civic museum in the nearby town of Market Harborough. The now gleaming coins are decorated with wreaths and horses. They're about the size of 5p pieces, but speak of a wild-eyed age of tribal lands and windswept hill forts. A map of the Welland valley area. Hidden riches are something of a local theme here."

A retired teacher named Ken Wallace discovered a cache of about 5,000 Iron Age silver and gold coins in the Welland valley in November 2000. The hoard now resides at the civic museum in Market Harborough and features coins decorated with wreaths and horses, each roughly the size of a 5p piece. The find points to a turbulent era of tribal lands and hill forts. The treasure came from a sloping, sheep-dotted landscape near the Leicestershire–Northamptonshire border beside the River Welland. Market Harborough combines Saxon roots with Jacobean, Georgian and Victorian architecture and hosts attractions such as Quinns bookshop, Two Old Goats cafe and the early 19th-century Foxton Locks. The area functions as an unsung alternative to the Cotswolds.

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