Trevor Penny was searching for lost and discarded objects in the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire in November 2023 when he made the discovery. The magnet fisher had been down on his luck that day and only pulled scaffolding poles from the water, he told Live Science in a message on Facebook. When Penny lugged out the sword, he didn’t immediately recognize what it was.
“I was on the side of the bridge and shouted to a friend on the other side of the bridge, ‘What is this?’” Penny, who is a member of the Thame Magnet Fishing Facebook group, recalled in the message. “He came running over shouting, ‘It looks like a sword!’”
There’s been a lot a bad press for magnet fishers around this unfortunately. I’ve seen multiple articles claiming that magnet fishing is illegal in the UK (it isn’t) and that they guy should have had permission from the land owner.
Maybe he strictly should have had permission, but no one seems to care when we’re just pulling rubbish out. If landowners want to claim they own whatever is sat at the bottom of the river on their land, then they should also be responsible for the costs of cleaning up said river and properly managing it.
Personally I don’t think I would have made my find this public, and quietly displayed it in my home. If the British Museum can just take stuff and display it then I can too.
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Agreed.
Where the line is drawn in the law seems like a reasonable demarcation: the Treasure Act of 1996.