Thread by @OptimoPrincipi

1) A thread of Roman treasure, wartime intrigue, secrets, lies and obsession.

21st June 1946 – Mr Sydney Ford walks into his local Suffolk police station a troubled man. He has a confession to make. The Sergeant sits Ford down with a pot of tea and asks him to tell his story...

2) January 1942 - over four years earlier. World War II was raging but country life carried on around the market town of Mildenhall, Suffolk. A farmer named Gordon Butcher set to work ploughing a field. Around 3pm his plough struck something solid, breaking off the tractor...

3) Butcher dug around expecting to remove a tree stump or similar mundane obstruction. Instead, the ploughman pulled from the soil a huge, mysterious disc of blackened metal. Unsure what to make of the strange object, he duteously went to fetch his boss, Mr Sydney Ford...

4) As the light faded and a steady snowfall swirled around them, Ford and his ploughman Butcher worked together pulling one strange metal object after another from the soil, eventually filling a sack with over 30 pieces - some of them revealing hints of silver through the dirt...

5) Despite their joint efforts in retrieving the enormous hoard, it was decided between the men that Sydney Ford would keep all the mysterious metal objects for himself. Butcher let his boss take the heavy sack home and thought nothing more of it...

6) In his workshop where he normally repaired farm machinery, Ford set to work cleaning the pieces of blackened silver that had lay in the ground for millennia. A task that would become an obsession - taking days, then months, and then years...

7) Ford used wire wool, polish and most worryingly, a blow-torch to remove the toughest corrosion from the silver pieces. The "Great Dish" - the first and biggest silver item pulled from the soil that wintry January day, would take Ford almost 2 years to clean...

8) Gradually being revealed in Ford's workshop was one of the most spectacular hoards of Roman treasure ever discovered in Britain; dating from the 4th century AD, it comprised 34 masterpieces of Roman silver tableware including serving platters and plates, spoons and ladles...

9) Though the most spectacular of the treasures was without doubt the 'Great Dish': 2 feet in diameter and weighing over 8kg in pure silver; decorated at its centre with the face of Oceanus surrounded by concentric circles of sea creatures and a riotous Bacchic procession...

10) Once each of the pieces was cleaned to its former glory and met his wife's approval, they were brought into the house and displayed proudly on their sideboard. This 1944 image shows Mr Ford's son with pieces of the treasure, including the Great Dish, on the cabinet behind...

11) Though the treasure was not just admired, it was used regularly by the family. At Christmas, the Great Dish became a fruit bowl filled with apples, oranges, pears and nuts while Ford used one of the Roman silver spoons at breakfast and dinner every day!...

12) Everything began to unravel with a visit by Dr Hugh Fawcett, an antiquarian who would drop by every few years to see if Ford had any ancient arrows or flints to sell. Fawcett caught sight of the dazzling silver utensils which Ford tried to dismiss as some "old Roman pewter"..

13) Fawcett picked up two spoons with Latin inscriptions wishing long life to a man called Papittedus and a woman called Pascentia, quickly confirming them as important Roman silver treasures. Reluctantly, Ford brought out the rest of the enormous hoard for the expert to see...

14) Astonished at the scale and quality of the treasure, Fawcett told Ford he must report its discovery immediately. Ford maintained he thought it was cheap pewter all along but the game was up. Revealing his true motivations, Ford exclaimed: "I won't have anyone take it off me!"

15) Anxious at the consequences of having not reported this priceless hoard sure to be declared Treasure Trove, Ford walked into his local police station where our thread began. Police seized the Roman treasure from his home the next day but there was more intrigue to come...

16) Reading his morning newspaper, the sensational story of the hoard caught the attention of a young RAF fighter pilot, spy and fledgling author by the name of Roald Dahl. "The story of the treasure sent shivers of electricity down my legs to the soles of my feet..."

17) "I leapt up from my chair without finishing my breakfast and rushed out to my car to drive the hundred and twenty miles to Mildenhall. I found the small house of the ploughman Gordon Butcher who was having his lunch when I knocked the door..."

18) Dahl assured Butcher he would write the truthful story of how the treasure was found and they spent several hours together reliving the tale of its discovery. Afterwards Dahl called on the other finder Sydney Ford who shut the door in the writer’s face...

19) Upon returning home, Dahl wrote his story of "The Mildenhall Treasure" which he sold to an American magazine. He was paid well and when his money arrived he sent exactly half of it on to the humble ploughman, Gordon Butcher...

20) An inquest held in July 1946 heard testimonies from Ford, Butcher, Fawcett as well as archaeologists and curators from the British Museum. Ford again claimed he thought the treasure was made of pewter, likely fearful of the consequences if he admitted he knew it was silver...

21) Under the common law of Treasure Trove, like any significant ancient find of silver or gold with no surviving owners, the hoard was declared treasure and property of the Crown. For eventually revealing the priceless discovery, Ford and Butcher were each paid the sum of £1000.

22) The treasure was transported to The British Museum under armed guard, where it was quickly put on display and became an overnight sensation; so many wanting to view it that hundreds had to be turned away. But there were still more twists in the tale to come...

23) Doubts soon began to surface as to the real circumstances of the hoard’s discovery. When Ford brought archaeologists to where the treasure was found, it was a different spot to the one he had earlier shown police. Later, a different spot again on another farmer's field...

24) He led two archaeologists, one a Cambridge don, to multiple spots, at one of which they dug up bits of a shiny, metal Georgian teapot they suspected Ford had planted for them to find. Suspicious, they began to wonder if the treasure had been found at Mildenhall at all?..

25) Had Ford just forgotten where the treasure was unearthed? Or was he perhaps just having some fun with establishment figures of his day? Some whispered that the treasure had been much bigger still and there was yet more hidden away. Another intriguing theory suggested that...

26) The treasure may actually have been found in North Africa during the Second World War and smuggled back to England. Ford's fields lay next to the runway of RAF Mildenhall, a bustling military hub from which thousands of wartime bombing raids were launched. Could it be that...

27) Soldiers returning from North Africa with a priceless illicit cargo then buried it near the airfield for later recovery, only for Butcher and Ford to come along with a plough and spoil their plans? In retrospect, it seems unlikely and views that ancient Britannia was a...

28) ..backwards and impoverished province have changed over time, with many more wonderful treasure hoards (Hoxne, Thetford etc) unearthed in recent decades. We will likely never know the exact details of how the Mildenhall Treasure was found, which only adds to its mystique...

29) The sensational and enigmatic silver treasure can still be enjoyed at the @BritishMuseum, where in 1946 a young, aspiring author named Roald Dahl gazed at it in awe, writing "it was fabulous - I got shivers all over again just looking at it."

30) *The story of this Roman treasure can be read in "The Mildenhall Treasure" by Richard Hobbs and of course in Roald Dahl's story, re-published in 1999 with wonderful illustrations by Ralph Steadman, some of which are used in this thread.* (END)