A HAMPSHIRE treasure hunter struck gold when he discovered a hoard of rare coins worth more than £1million.

Paul Coleman was part of a team that discovered more than 5,000 coins in one of the most significant finds in the UK in recent years.

The 59-year-old father of two, who owns Southampton-based wedding car business Swallow Cars, made the discovery during a Christmas dig in Buckinghamshire.

Some of the silver coins were more than 1,000 years old, and featured the faces of Anglo Saxon and Viking kings including Ethelred the Unready and Canute.

They were found on land near Aylesbury in a lead bucket, buried two feet underground.

The discovery has been hailed as “very significant” and it is thought the extremely rare coins could be worth more than £1million.

Pete Welch, leader of the Weekend Wanderers Detecting Club which organised the dig, said: "They're like mirrors, no scratching, and buried really carefully in a lead container, deep down.

"It looks like only two people have handled these coins. The person who made them and the person who buried them.

"Metal detecting is a bit random but most farms have a bit of history so you have a chance of finding something.

"I think this was a case of you either move to the right or move to the left and on this case our member moved the right way.

"I'm just hoping that these coins will end up in a museum for the public to see. I wouldn't want to see them go to a private collector."

Mr Welch believes the hoard is equal in importance to the Staffordshire Hoard of gold and garnets found by a metal detectorist in 2009.

He added: "We don't know how many variations of the coins there are and when we do we will know how significant the find is.

"This would have been a huge amount of money in its day. One coin alone would have been a lot back then.

"Everyone dreams of a pot of gold. The reality is you spend most of your time digging up bits of junk "This is the first of its kind since I've been running the club, which is 23 years."

A Bucks County Museum spokesman said: "This is one of the largest hoards of Anglo Saxon coins ever found in Britain.

"When the coins have been properly identified and dated, we may be able to guess at why such a great treasure was buried."

He added that as the coins are precious metal over 300 years old they fall within the remit of the Treasure Act.