We want to learn lessons from what happened.”A Central Scotland Fire Service spokesman there had been no risk to the public.. A rare Roman pot and hundreds of silver coins have been found by two metal-detecting enthusiasts on the banks of a river estuary in Cornwall. A rare Roman pot and hundreds of silver coins have been found by two metal-detecting enthusiasts on the banks of a river estuary in Cornwall.
Jonathan Clemes said yesterday that he and Trevor Bird, who have been detecting for 15 years, do not want to reveal the exact location of the find – an earthenware pot containing an estimated 700 coins.An archaeologist at Truro Museum had told them the coins and pot represented the rarest of their kind found in Britain, he said. Arrangements are being made for the hoard to be taken to the British Museum in London for examination.Mr Clemes, 29, from St Austell, said he picked up a handful of coins after hearing a signal on his detector. “We began digging, and next moment we had hit the jackpot.”The pot is in pieces, and coins are fused to parts of it. But we also picked up 80 or 90 loose coins,” said Mr Clemes.During his years of detecting he had found gold rings, ancient stone tools and cannon balls, said Mr Clemes, but this is his biggest discovery.”We know it is worth a lot of money, but what matters is how old it is and who put it there.” He added: “We would like it to stay in Cornwall because this is where it was found.”The other detector who uncovered the hoard, Trevor Bird, 35, said: “We are still pretty shocked by what we have found.” He said it was “pure luck” that they had discovered the hoard in an area where they had investigated once before, but found nothing.After turning up some loose coins they began digging and unearthed a piece of pottery.Once the pair realised what they had found, it took them another four hours to uncover the full hoard, said Mr Bird..
A convicted British drug smuggler who escaped from Ford Open Prison 10 years ago is living openly on Spain’s “Costa del Crime”. But the Government is refusing to comment on why it is not seeking the extradition or deportation of Joe Wilkins, a well known London gangland figure of the 1960s. A convicted British drug smuggler who escaped from Ford Open Prison 10 years ago is living openly on Spain’s “Costa del Crime”. But the Government is refusing to comment on why it is not seeking the extradition or deportation of Joe Wilkins, a well known London gangland figure of the 1960s.
This is fuelling claims by underworld sources that Wilkins, 64, has been allowed to remain free while acting as an agent provocateur in Spain for the intelligence service, MI6, and the British police, despite having a serious criminal record. Wilkins, who has lived in Estepona since 1992, is said to have helped police to locate Kenneth Noye after he fled Britain over the M25 murder in 1996 of Stephen Cameron.Charles Clarke, a Home Office minister, said last week that individual cases were not discussed. He was replying to a question from the Liberal Democrat MP Jackie Ballard, who said yesterday: “This implies they have something to hide. If they were seeking his extradition they would be happy to say.
I intend to take the matter up with Jack Straw.”Lawyers say there are provisions in the law for Britain to ask Spain for Wilkins’s extradition or deportation as a convicted drug smuggler. He was jailed in 1988 for 10 years for being “heart and centre” of a plot to smuggle cannabis worth £1.5m into Britain.Despite his criminal record he was sent to Ford Open Prison in West Sussex. Remarkably, he was allowed a day release pass to visit his dentist unaccompanied, and absconded to Spain with eight years of his sentence left to run.Yesterday a British underworld source in Estepona said: “If Joe is helping the spooks [MI6], that may explain why it was so easy for him to go on his toes [escape from prison] and why he lives so openly. The view taken here is that he’s a grass.”Suspicion of being an informer has put Wilkins in a difficult position. He is understood to have been badly beaten up in his home by associates of a London crime family.After fleeing to Estepona, Wilkins immersed himself in the British expatriate criminal fraternity. Suspicion of being an informer fell on him after he was said to have involved a number of local expatriates in a money-laundering sting.
He was also thought to have been used in a joint MI6/Customs and Excise operation focusing on money-laundering by prominent Gibraltarians.When Kenneth Noye fled Britain after the murder of Stephen Cameron, he stayed with Wilkins for a while. Noye, who was using a false identity, later bought a villa near Cadiz and moved there. Underworld sources are convinced that Wilkins helped the police to track Noye down.Wilkins has a colourful past, and detectives described him as a “chameleon of crime” because of the way he changed his rackets to suit the times In the 1950s he was a used car dealer. In the freewheeling 1960s he ran bars in Soho in London, graduating to casinos and eventually escort agencies. He was married to the former dancer Pearl Read, who recently posed in her bra, at the age of 56, as part of an Age Concern advertising campaign. In 1972 he became involved in Soho turf wars and was shot by a gang of four men who came calling at his offices.
