Available online
Staffordshire’s Anglo-Saxon booty inspires a host of short plays by writers including April De Angelis and Darren Sharp
A metal detectorist from the West Midlands lists his day’s discoveries at the beginning of Hoard: Rediscovered. There’s a penny, a few buttons and bits of scrap. People here have “detected for donkey’s years”, he says, and “never found a single item”. His words highlight the unprecedented, and unimagined, nature of Terry Herbert’s find in July 2009 when his metal detector beeped over a seventh-century haul so magnificent that some archaeologists wept when they first saw it.
That ancient booty, named the Staffordshire hoard, is the subject of Unearthed, a documentary drama streamed online by the New Vic theatre, and accompanied by 11 short films written by Sara Pascoe, Lemn Sissay, Isy Suttie and April De Angelis, among others, which use the hoard as their creative kindling.