Andrew Riley pulled one medieval gold ring from a Yorkshire field in the spring of 2024. Four months later, his detector sang again on the same ground, and a second ring came up, one tied to a British law only a handful of detectorists ever use
Riley is 71. He’s semiretired from a career as an architect, and he lives near Middlesbrough, in North Yorkshire. He started metal detecting in the 1990s, stepped away for years, then picked it back up about four years ago. Mostly, he just wanted to get outside.
He goes out with his detector at least twice a week. Most trips end with nothing more than bottle caps and rusted nails. That’s the part newcomers rarely hear about. “It’s complete luck,” Riley has said, and he means it.
Twice in 2024, though, luck landed on him. Two gold rings, both roughly 600 years old, turned up on the same Northallerton farmland. They surfaced within four months of each other, on ground he’d already walked dozens of times.
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Eight inches down in a ridge and furrow field
The first ring surfaced in March 2024. Riley had worked a ridge and furrow field for weeks, the corrugated pattern medieval plowing leaves in English farmland. His detector’s signal led him about eight inches down.
What came up was a thin gold band. He almost didn’t give it a second look. “I thought it was just costume jewelry at first until I saw the inscription,” he said. He’d realized, in that instant, that the metal wasn’t tin foil or scrap.
What the enamel actually shows
The ring dates to roughly AD 1400 to 1500, Noonans says. The London auction house is handling the sale. Its flat gold band carries red enamel droplets against a blue ground. Specialists call the design a “blood of Christ” ring.
The droplets stand for the wounds of the crucifixion. Medieval worshippers focused on Christ’s physical suffering, and jewelry like this spread with that shift. The findspot sits near land once held by James Strangeways. He belonged to York’s Corpus Christi Guild, founded in 1408.
Four months later, the detector sang again
Riley was back out that summer. On an evening in July 2024, a second signal stopped him. His detector had already turned up an Elizabeth I sixpence and some silver chain links nearby.
This time, a heavier gold ring came out of the dirt, one with a carved bezel. “I did the obligatory gold dance and then had a lie down in shock,” he said. He wasn’t exaggerating. The find was rare enough to floor him.
A dragon coiled at her feet
The second ring’s oval bezel carries a carved figure: St Margaret of Antioch. She’s shown haloed, in flowing robes, holding a cross. A dragon coils at her feet.
English women called on St Margaret during childbirth. Rings like this one worked as personal protection through labor. The band’s shoulders carry white enameled scallops, three of four still holding their color. Carved foliage runs above them.
The report that has to happen before any sale
Neither ring belonged to Riley the moment it left the ground. English law requires people to report finds like these. So he brought both rings to a Finds Liaison Officer in Durham.
From there, the case moved to a coroner. An inquest at Northallerton Coroner’s Court called both rings treasure. That’s the legal status behind Noonans’ own case notes on Tuesday’s sale.
How a find like this ends up in a saleroom
A treasure ruling doesn’t mean the state keeps a find. Under the Treasure Act 1996, a museum gets first right to buy it. An independent valuation committee sets the price, and the money goes to the finder and the landowner.
If no museum steps forward, ownership reverts to the finder and the landowner. They can then sell it privately or at auction. That’s the rule that put Riley’s two rings on a Noonans block instead of behind a museum’s glass.
What the two rings could fetch tomorrow
Noonans prices the “blood of Christ” ring at £5,000 to £7,000 ($6,700 to $9,400). The St Margaret ring carries an estimate of £4,000 to £6,000 ($5,400 to $8,100). Combined, that’s above £10,000 before the hammer even falls.
Both go under the hammer at the same sale: Noonans Mayfair’s Jewellery, Watches, Silver and Objects of Vertu auction. It’s set for Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Estimates aren’t guarantees. Treasure pieces with a documented findspot sometimes clear them by a wide margin.
The landowner who said yes
None of this happens without the farmer who let Riley walk the field. The landowner is a metal detectorist himself. That’s part of why he said yes to Riley’s search.
Riley plans to split whatever the rings bring equally with him. That’s the standard arrangement under the Treasure Act when a finder and a landowner aren’t the same person. Half of a five-figure sale is still a real payday for two people who weren’t expecting one.
What Riley plans to do with his half
Riley already knows where his share is going: an interrailing trip through Italy, train tickets and all. It’s a trip a semiretired architect can finally justify after decades of putting it off.
It’s a modest plan next to six centuries underground, and that’s part of what makes it land. A gold band buried before Columbus crossed the Atlantic is about to help fund a train ride. The country it runs through didn’t even exist as one nation when the ring was made.
