Rare gold coins that were lost during the Black Death have been discovered by a metal detectorist.

Coins

Coins

The Edward III 23-carat leopard was found with another gold coin in Norfolk and finds liaison officer Dr. Helen Geake says that "hardly any have survived".

Geake added that the leopard was withdrawn just months after being minted in 1344 and said that they were the equivalent to £12,000 in modern money. She also claimed that they would have been owned by someone "at the top of society".

She told BBC News: "The royal treasury might talk in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, but the physical reality was sacks of silver pennies.

"Then Edward III decided to reintroduce the first gold coins in England since the Anglo-Saxon era - and no-one knows why.

"For some reason they didn't catch on, but when one or two pennies were the equivalent of a day's wages at today's minimum wage rate, perhaps very few people used them."