Can I metal-detect here?
Can you legally metal-detect there? Check before you ask, ask before you dig.
The first question in detecting is not what's in the ground — it's whether you can legally put a spade in it. Enter a postcode or a spot and we check the registers that decide it: scheduled monuments (a criminal offence to detect on), SSSIs, open-access and common land. Free. The full report then reads the same 1 km square of land for you: 1 m LIDAR terrain, drought-summer satellite imagery, and the pack for finding and asking the landowner.
The rules, on every page of this product
You need permission from the landowner AND the occupier before detecting anywhere — there is no public right to detect, even on footpaths, beaches or open-access land.
Finds of treasure must be reported under the Treasure Act 1996 — normally within 14 days to the coroner, in practice via your local Finds Liaison Officer.
Record your finds with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (finds.org.uk) — reporting is the norm of responsible detecting, and it is how finds become knowledge.
What the report covers — one 1 km square
Legal check
scheduled monuments, SSSIs, listed buildings, conservation areas, battlefields — verdict per register
Access status
CROW open-access land and registered common land — and why neither means you can detect
Terrain
multidirectional hillshade + slope from EA 1 m LIDAR, with a how-to-read key for earthworks
Drought cropmarks
satellite vegetation imagery: 2018 and 2022 drought summers beside a normal-year baseline
Whose land to ask
the £3 Land Registry title route, INSPIRE polygons, and a written permission template
Heritage nearby
named scheduled monuments and registered sites in and around the square — as no-go flags, not targets
The legal check is free and stays free. The full report is £19 one-off for the square — no subscription.
Is it legal to metal-detect here?
Two questions decide it. First, is there a legal stop? Detecting on a scheduled monument without Historic England consent is a criminal offence under section 42 of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, and protected sites like SSSIs add consent requirements of their own — that is what the free check looks up for your exact spot. Second, do you have permission? You need the landowner’s AND occupier’s permission everywhere in England and Wales, on every field, footpath, beach and open-access hillside. There is no public right to detect anywhere, so the honest answer is never a plain yes — it is "no legal stop is recorded here, now go and ask".
Does the report tell me where finds are?
No, and it never will. Nothing in this product locates finds, hoards or productive spots, and we never show anything sharper than the 1 km square — the same precision the Portable Antiquities Scheme itself publishes, for the same reason: precise findspots in the wrong hands mean nighthawking and wrecked archaeology. What the report shows is the LAND: what the law says about it, what a metre-resolution elevation model shows of its surface, and how the same square looked from orbit in drought summers against a normal year. Reading it is your fieldcraft; asking permission is your job; recording finds with the PAS is the deal.
What does the free check cover?
Scheduled monuments, SSSIs, listed buildings, conservation areas and registered battlefields at your point, from the national planning data platform, plus CROW open-access land and registered common land from Natural England — with a plain verdict and what each one means for detecting. These registers are England-only: for a Welsh or Scottish spot we say "not checkable here" and point you at Cadw and Historic Environment Scotland, because "no designations found" would be a lie of coverage, not an all-clear.
What does the full report add?
Three things for the same 1 km square. A terrain read: multidirectional hillshade and slope renders computed from the Environment Agency’s 1 m LIDAR, with a key to reading ridge-and-furrow, platforms, moats and hollow-ways — the archaeology of the surface that decades of ploughing hide at eye level. A drought-summer sequence: satellite vegetation imagery of the square from 2018 and 2022 beside a normal summer, where buried features sometimes show as marks in ripening crops. And a landowner pack: how to work out whose land it is (the £3 Land Registry title route and the free INSPIRE polygon guidance), plus a written permission template you can print and hand over.
Whose land is it, and how do I ask?
England and Wales have no free public map of who owns every field, but you can get there for £3: HM Land Registry’s find-property-information service sells the registered title for any land, which names the owner. The free INSPIRE index polygons show registered parcel boundaries so you can work out which title to buy. The report walks you through both, then gives you a written permission template covering access, finds agreement and Treasure Act duties — agreed in writing before you dig, which protects you and the landowner alike.
What are my obligations if I find something?
Finds that qualify as treasure (most gold and silver objects over 300 years old, prehistoric base-metal hoards, and associated coins) must be reported under the Treasure Act 1996 — normally within 14 days to the coroner, in practice via your local Finds Liaison Officer. Beyond the legal duty, responsible detecting means recording your finds with the Portable Antiquities Scheme at finds.org.uk, following the Code of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting, and never detecting on scheduled land. The hobby’s good name — and its continued legality — rests on this.
Which areas are covered?
The legal check and the LIDAR terrain are England-only, because the underlying registers (planning.data.gov.uk, Natural England, the EA LIDAR programme) are English national services. Satellite imagery works anywhere, but a report without its compliance layer would be a metal-detecting product with the law taken out — so for now the product is England-only, and Welsh or Scottish locations get an honest "not checkable" with pointers to Cadw and Historic Environment Scotland rather than a half-report.
Sources: planning.data.gov.uk designations (MHCLG, OGL v3.0); Natural England CROW access and common land (OGL v3.0); Environment Agency 1 m LIDAR Composite DTM (OGL v3.0); Sentinel-2 imagery (ESA Copernicus, via Microsoft Planetary Computer). This is land and law information, not legal advice — and it never locates finds. Detecting without permission is trespass at best and theft at worst; detecting on a scheduled monument is a criminal offence.
Novarly Parcel · official public data, read properly · parcel.novarly.com