.jpeg?trim=1,0,1,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Miss Detectorist: ‘I felt embarrassed starting metal detecting as a woman – now we are changing the male-dominated field’ – UK Times")
When Ellie Verrecchia pulled up in her car for her first metal detecting dig in the Cornish countryside, she quickly discovered she was the only woman.
“I didn’t know how to hold my gear and no one said anything to me,” she said. “It felt like the others were thinking ‘who the hell are you coming to our dig?’
After a fruitless search for sunken objects, she was dejected and ready to give up her childhood aspiration of becoming a metal detectorist. But just as she got to her car to drive home, one person from the group came over to speak to her.
“He reached out and gave me a name for a club, and urged me to try it,” she said. “I joined it, and to be honest, I haven’t looked back since.”
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Three years on from arriving at that first dig, the married mother-of-two is one of several women using their online platforms to help open up the hobby to others.
Using her social media profile, Miss Detectorist, she shares her best finds – including Roman coins, Bronze Age tools and Saxon artefacts – with her thousands of Instagram and YouTube followers, encouraging others to pick up the detector and trowel.
The marketing professional even makes the hobby, typically known for middle-aged men dressed in camouflage, look fashionable.
Membership at the National Council for Metal Detecting has quadrupled over the past decade to 42,000 today, with women now making up 10 to 20 per cent of members, according to general secretary Alan Tamblyn.
The numbers are also leading to more archaeological finds and treasures, with the British Museum reporting a record-breaking number discovered in 2024.
Rolling back to her childhood, it was a hobby Mrs Verrecchia had in mind from an early age, having been inspired by treasure-finding films like The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Three years ago, she decided to invest £600 in a metal detector bundle, which included a detector, spade, trowel and walking boots.
“When I first started, I felt like a black sheep,” she said. “I looked quite different to the older guys, and unlike most of them appearing in camouflage, I would turn up in sports gear and a fleece – but things began to change quite quickly, and people were so welcoming.
“That first dig, I think I went to the wrong club dig, where they weren’t used to seeing someone like me show up.”
Gaining support and knowledge from those around her, it wasn’t long before she made her first significant find; a Roman coin in a Devon field. “Being from Bath [a city in Roman Britain], I was thrilled,” she said. “It was a sestertius [a large bronze coin], it had very little detail, but it got me completely hooked.”
She has yet to find anything that falls under the Treasure Act’s definition for treasure – any object at least 200 years old and made of at least 10 per cent precious metal or a hoard of coins.
But her finds of Roman and medieval coins, as well as artefacts from across the eras, including nails for Roman shoes and Georgian gold rings, have kept her returning to farmers’ fields for more, no matter the weather.
Her favourite finds have been Roman coins featuring the bust of empresses. Last month, she unearthed a silver coin dating between 193AD and 211AD with the empress Julia Domna struck on its back. On the other side of the coin, it read “age of good fortune” in Latin.
“For me, as a female detectorist, when you look down at the earth and first make out the figure of a woman looking back at you from a coin 1,800 years old, that’s a special moment,” she said. “Both she and me have different lives, but we still share the same juggles with work, family and politics. It’s like a connection through time.”
Ms Verrecchia thinks the rise of detectorists is down to social media groups and the hit comedy Detectorists, starring Mackenzie Crook. Equipment is also more readily available, and organised digs are well-advertised.
Among the groups is Sassy Searchers Ladies Metal Detecting Tribe, which started in 2018 and now boasts 2,400 members. Like Mrs Verrecchia, leading group member Emma Youell, 34, said she felt intimidated when she first started 12 years ago.
“It felt like everyone was looking at me and thinking ‘all the gear and no idea’,” she said. “Some of it was in my head, and I had to get over inner demons, but now it is much easier for women joining.”
The animator said she now arrived at digs where up to half of metal detectorists are women. “I think it was just an old-school perception that it was not what women do; get dirty in the mud,” she said. “That’s completely changed now, it’s fantastic to see so many women out on the field.”
Last year, Ms Youell found an Iron Age gold quarter stater from the Iceni tribe, which was led by Boudica during a revolt against Roman rule in around 60AD. “For me, metal detecting is about gaining a clear head in the field with nature around, it sort of resets me ahead of the working week,” she said.
“Then the bonus is the finds of history and the excitement of unearthing something dropped by someone thousands of years ago.”
Under the Treasure Act, anyone finding an item that could be defined as treasure must report it to a local finds liaison officer, who can send it to the British Museum-managed Portable Antiquities Scheme for assessment.
If classed as treasure, it is claimed by The Crown, with a reward offered to the detectorist and the landowner.
Among the finds in 2024 was a hoard of 179 silver pennies, likely buried on the eve of the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
However, for Mrs Verrecchia, like many detectorists, most objects found are not classed as treasure, which, rather than being sent to museums, instead fill up home collection drawers. Now, as the hobby continues to grow in popularity, she wants even more women to get involved.
“Women make excellent detectorists because we are perhaps a little bit more thoughtful about the land and human story, and bring a fresh perspective,” she said.
“A lot of history was written by men, so it is great is that we now have all different people in the process of unearthing what was left behind.”
