Tales from the riverbank

Treasure hunter Jane Eastman in the River Itchen, near Winchester, Hampshire (Image: Steve Reigate)Jane Eastman reaches into the shallows and pulls up treasure. It may not be gold or an ancient coin, but it is just as fascinating: a tiny aquamarine bottle that 120 years ago held ink. Millions of these bottles in myriad different patterns were sold for as little as a penny apiece and discarded as soon as they were empty, marking the spread of literacy through the 19th century. Jane with some of her antique bottle finds (Image: Steve Reigate)Now pulled from the bottom of a rural stream after decades stranded in the silt and mud, it sparkles in the sunshine.Unlike the mudlarks who scour the banks of the River Thames, Jane searches the crystal-clear chalk streams of southern England, equipped only with a repurposed washing-up bowl, waders and a long-handled garden grabber.Over the past five years she has found tens of thousands of items, from a razor-sharp neolithic flint blade to coins, medals, dozens of pocket knives and even a gold watch made by royal jeweller Garrard. Recent discoveries include gold wedding rings she believes were deliberately discarded, an 18th century hunting knife and a medieval Spanish coin.Alongside precious items that were presumably lost or mislaid there is also the detritus of everyday life. In the days before rubbish collections, broken crockery, bottles and other junk would be loaded into a wheelbarrow then dumped for the river to take away.A silversmith and jewellery maker in “real” life, Jane has been spending an increasing amount of time up to her neck in the chilly waters of the fast flowing streams that surround her home in Whitchurch, Hampshire.She relishes the company of brown trout, water voles, bullheads and kingfishers, but focusses all her attention on the gravelly riverbed. She tries to keep away from the pike and eels that lurk in the weeds. Recent rain has increased the water flow, washing away the silt that previously shrouded many of the items she is looking for.The chalk streams emerge from aquifers having spent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years percolating to the surface. Rivers such as the Itchen, the Test and the Meon are fed by numerous small chalk streams, some of which only appear in winter. Jane’s custom washing-up bowl is essential in spotting her drowned treasure (Image: Steve Reigate)Jane keeps her favourite hunting grounds a closely guarded secret. She has worked hard to research each one, identify and track down the landowner and negotiate a “permission” so she cannot be accused of trespassing.An hour fishing for treasure produces an iron key, a brass button, a window latch, several Victorian copper coins and a badly-mutilated toy soldier.The washing-up bowl, which has been fitted with a clear perspex base and a bracket to take a waterproof GoPro camera, is essential to see the riverbed without the distraction of surface currents and reflections. But equally vital is an experienced eye that can spot an ancient bottle poking out of the riverbed between eel grass and weeds.The water coats everything in a layer of limescale that often needs to be chipped off before the object can be identified. The chalk jacket provides a protective cushion if it is dragged along the riverbed.A mother of two grown up boys in her 40s, Jane comes from generations of Hampshire millworkers. Her father, grandfather and great grandfather were chief engineers at the Portals paper mill in Overton where the special paper used for bank notes and official documents such as passports was made.She started bottle digging after stumbling across a Victorian dump when she was in her teens. “I have always been interested in old things. I started to notice things in rivers so I’d roll up my trousers and jump in,” she says.”If there’s been any human activity near that water you are almost guaranteed to find things.” An assortment of some of Jane’s finest submerged finds (Image: Steve Reigate)In one of her recent videos posted on her TikTok and Instagram accounts – @myordinarytreasure – which are followed by tens of thousands of viewers, she holds a fistful of rings all gathered from the beds of rivers.Some may have slipped off the fingers of flyfishermen but others, like a diamond engagement ring and gold wedding bands found upstream of bridges, may have been deliberately tossed into the water.She explains: “The rings are fasand cinating. I know a lot of them would have been thrown in rather than lost just because of where I’ve found them. A lot of places I go are inaccessible and pretty deep.”Her favourite is an aluminium ring marked “souvenir 14-15”, a keepsake of the Great War that may have been made in the trenches of the Western Front.Other military-related finds include cap badges, a First World War steel helmet adapted and reissued for the Second World War, occasional munitions and a heavy Victorian brass cavalry harness badge. She found the 18ct gold watch made by Garrard, the Bond Street jewellers, in a “metal patch”.The fast flowing water sorts out material that has fallen or been thrown into the river. “Things of the same grade and weight seem to settle in the same place. In the very fast spots that is where you will be finding metal,” she continues. A collection of rings collected from Jane’s river expeditions (Image: Steve Reigate)”Over the seasons the levels go up as the rains come and they flush the riverbed so it’s constantly changing. It is a slow game but I get to know the places that I visit very well. I let the water do the work.”When she first spotted it, the 1920s hexagonal ladies’ watch was covered in a layer of “crud” but the gold case was untarnished as the day it had gone in. She assumed it was plated or rolled gold but when she got the back open she spotted the hallmarks for 18ct.She posted pictures on Instagram and Dominic Chapman, a watchmaker from Worthing in West Sussex, offered to restore it. The watch is now looking almost as good as new, ticking strongly and keeping time despite spending a century under water. “Seeing gold does take your breath away, it just shines out at you,” says Jane.”In the last couple of months, virtually every time I’ve been out I’ve found gold. There is a lot of gold in the water. You just won’t see from the river bank, you won’t even see it if you are in the water.”Another gold find was a beautiful 9ct gold pencil and that was not found too far away from the same spot as the watch. A lot of this stuff you can imagine was lost when people were enjoying picnics and paddling in the river. A watchmaker kindly restored one of Jane’s rare finds (Image: Steve Reigate)”Even if you find nothing it’s a relaxing thing to do. I just totally zone out, completely focussed on what I am looking at on the riverbed. When you are near a dump site the fish swarm around because the silt still has nutrients in it even after a couple of hundred years.”Although she has a metal detector she does not use it, finding her eyes are more reliable. The other reason is that a metal detector is no help finding ink bottles, clay pipes or much of the “ordinary” treasure she is searching for. She doesn’t sell or trade her finds.Sons Fletcher and Morgan, aged 19 and 20, have no interest in following her into the water, though she lives in hope.Her partner occasionally accompanies her but is not an aficionado of the antique. However he does have lucky genes.Last month he went treasure fishing with her and found a quarter Real, a 15th century Spanish silver coin minted during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and worth at least £200.