1. The Crown owns the gold

Gold and silver in England and Wales belong to the Crown, wherever they are and whoever owns the land above them. This is old law, and it is still good law.

• The principle was settled in the Case of Mines (1568), which held that mines of gold and silver belong to the Crown by prerogative.
• The Mines Royal Act 1688 and Royal Mines Act 1693 softened the practical effect: the Crown could no longer seize an entire mine because it happened to contain some gold, and could instead buy the ore at a fixed price. But ownership of the gold and silver themselves was left with the Crown UK Parliament 1688 and 1693.
• In Devon, the Crown was asserting exactly this prerogative right by the 1260s Claughton 2013.

The practical consequence: gold you recover from a Devon stream is not yours. It is the Crown’s, held by you.

Who administers it

The Crown’s mineral rights are managed by The Crown Estate. Their published position is commercial: they consider applications from responsible commercial applicants for an option to take a lease of Mines Royal, exercisable if a viable deposit is proved and planning permission is obtained, and applicants must show financial standing, environmental track record, marketing outlets, and operational and restoration proposals The Crown Estate. Enquiries go through their mineral agent.

That is a framework for companies. There is currently no recreational panning licence in England. The Crown Estate stopped issuing them some years ago UK Gold Prospector 2026.

Scotland and Wales are different

Worth knowing, because most online advice conflates them. Crown Estate Scotland operates a more permissive regime and recreational panning is provided for in some places. Wales has its own arrangements and an active licensed goldfield. Neither position applies in Devon.

2. The landowner owns the access

Separately and additionally, you need the landowner’s permission: for the bank, for the bed, and for any land you cross to get there. Riparian owners typically own the riverbed to the mid-line.

England has no statutory right to prospect. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 expressly excludes prospecting, digging and the removal of materials from the activities that open-access rights permit UK Gold Prospector 2026. The same logic applies to public footpaths: a right of way is a right to pass, not to work the ground.

Who owns Dartmoor

• The Duchy of Cornwall owns roughly a third of Dartmoor National Park, about 27,300 hectares, held since 1337 Duchy of Cornwall. It is a substantial mineral owner in its own right in Devon and Cornwall.
• The rest is a patchwork of commoners’ land, private estates, the National Trust, water companies, the MOD estate and the National Park Authority.
• Mineral rights are frequently severed from surface ownership in Devon, so the person farming the field may not control what is under it.

In short: identifying the right person to ask is genuinely hard work, and it is work you have to do.

3. The byelaws forbid the digging

This is the provision most accounts of Dartmoor prospecting miss, and it is decisive.

Byelaws made under section 90 of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 and section 11 of the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 apply to all Dartmoor access land Dartmoor National Park Authority. Two of them matter here:

No person shall without reasonable excuse remove from or displace on the access land any soil, peat, dung or stones.

No person shall on the access land use any device designed or adapted for detecting or locating any metal or mineral in the ground unless he is authorised to do so by the Authority.

Maximum penalty £500 for each.

The metal-detecting byelaw is worth noting even though detectors are near-useless for the fine, flaky gold this region produces: it establishes that the Authority actively regulates mineral searching on the commons.

4. The designations criminalise it

Layered on top, several designations make ground disturbance a criminal offence in its own right:

Scheduled Monuments. Under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, any ground disturbance within a Scheduled Monument without Scheduled Monument Consent is a criminal offence. Dartmoor’s alluvial tin streamworks, exactly the valley-bottom deposits where a prospector’s instincts would take them, are extensively scheduled. The streamwork beside Brim Brook, for one, is a designated monument.

SSSIs. Working a Site of Special Scientific Interest without consent obtained by the landowner from Natural England is an offence carrying an unlimited fine UK Gold Prospector 2026. Large parts of Dartmoor are SSSI, as is Hope’s Nose.

Protected species. Digging into banks risks offences relating to otters, water voles and kingfishers. The British Gold Panning Association’s code prohibits bank digging for precisely this reason. These are not gold-specific laws, but they bite hardest exactly where gold accumulates.

Water and environment. The Environment Agency has no gold-panning licence function, but does regulate water abstraction (relevant if you plan to use a pump), pollution, and works affecting main rivers. Mechanised equipment (sluices with pumps, dredges, highbankers) is where recreational panning turns into something needing consents.

The picture in one table

What this adds up to

Not a prohibition on the activity, but a strong steer about where:

• On the open moor: walking, looking and photographing are fine and encouraged. Digging and panning are not.
• On private ground off the moor: lawful with the landowner’s permission, and this is where the geology is better anyway.
• At a commercial site: the operator has already resolved the permissions, which is precisely what you are paying for.
• Selling what you find: don’t.