Recommendations

Target areas

Every candidate area we could justify from published evidence, ranked by what you may lawfully do there rather than by how much gold is in the ground.

Realistic day out Permission needed Look, don't dig Do not attempt MOD firing range National Park

Geometry from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0). Target markers are our own interpretations of published survey results and are indicative only. They are not survey positions and confer no right of access.

Evidence rating

5 pips: described in a published BGS survey or peer-reviewed paper with quantified gold
4 pips: published survey evidence, less directly quantified
3 pips: credible historical documentation, no modern confirmation
2 pips: anecdote or inference only

Realistic day out 1

Somewhere you can turn up and dig without arranging anything yourself.

North-west Devon, well off the moor

Holsworthy commercial panning site

Realistic day out

A paid gold-panning experience, and the one option on this list where the legal position is somebody else's problem.

Evidence
Prospect: Some chance
Access: Commercial site, pay to dig

Geology

North-west Devon sits near the Permian outliers. Hollacombe, close to Holsworthy, is one of the outliers BGS sampled in the Crediton Trough programme. Whether a given commercial site relies on natural local ground or on salted paydirt varies, and it is a fair question to ask the operator directly before you book.

Access and law

Commercial operation with the landowner's consent already in place, and a defined arrangement about what you may keep. This is the only route we found in Devon where a member of the public can dig for gold without arranging permissions themselves.

What we would do

Genuinely the right first move. Learn the pan-and-swirl on ground where you are welcome, find out whether you actually enjoy six hours in cold water, and only then start writing letters to farmers.

Only with permission 4

The geology is on your side. The ground is private, and the whole thing depends on a conversation.

South Hams, south of Dartmoor

Holbeton and Brownstone

Only with permission

The single best-documented gold occurrence anywhere near Dartmoor, and the site that made British geologists rewrite the model for gold in the South West.

Evidence
Prospect: Good odds of colour
Access: Private land

Geology

BGS drainage sampling found gold "particularly abundant" at a site about 2 km south-west of Holbeton. The grains are dendritic (branching, delicate shapes that cannot have travelled far from source) and carry palladium, with rims of up to 13% Pd and rare grains of potarite (PdHg). Follow-up augering and four boreholes near Brownstone Farm traced an east–west anomalous zone in head and weathered bedrock, with an oxidised, brecciated, carbonate-veined interval reaching 380 ppb Au. This is the type locality for the Permo-Triassic "redox" gold model: saline oxidising brines descending from Permian red beds and dropping their gold where they hit reduced, pyritic Devonian slate.

Access and law

Entirely enclosed farmland in private ownership, outside the National Park. There is no open access right here. The BGS themselves worked by written agreement with named landowners and farmers. Public footpaths cross the area but a right of way is a right to pass, not a right to dig or pan.

What we would do

Geologically this is the prize, and it is also the one place you certainly cannot just turn up to. If you are serious, this is where a politely written letter to a landowner, explaining that you want to pan a few buckets of stream gravel, take nothing of value, and fill in your holes, is worth more than any amount of kit.

South Hams, draining off southern Dartmoor

Lower Erme and Avon valleys

Only with permission

The belt of Lower Devonian rocks between the Erme and Avon estuaries, where a dedicated BGS gold programme found widespread anomalies.

Evidence
Prospect: Good odds of colour
Access: Private land

Geology

MRP Report 98 covered exactly this ground. Panned drainage concentrates returned repeated gold anomalies, and overburden panning turned up potarite plus cassiterite and secondary base-metal minerals. A striking detail: gold grains in the streams average three times the diameter of grains in the overburden, which the authors explain as grains physically growing in valley-bottom head and alluvium. Volcanic rocks exposed on both sides of the Erme estuary are "highly evolved" and do carry gold.

Access and law

Farmland and sunken lanes, privately owned, outside the National Park boundary. Tidal reaches of the Erme and Avon estuaries introduce a further complication: the foreshore below mean high water is typically Crown Estate land, which is a different permission again.

What we would do

The best combination of real published evidence and terrain a person can actually work. Target small tributary combes rather than the main river: BGS found the anomalies in the little streams. Permission first, every time.

South Hams, near Kingsbridge

Loddiswell Mine

Only with permission

Native gold in quartz–carbonate veins: an actual described gold occurrence in hard rock, not just grains in a stream.

Evidence
Prospect: Some chance
Access: Private land

Geology

About 2.5 km north of Loddiswell village, native gold occurs with quartz–carbonate vein mineralisation, described in detail as a gold–antimony occurrence by Stanley and co-workers in 1990. BGS drainage data flag an elongate zone west of the old mine as a possible centre of polymetallic mineralisation, one of only four localities in the whole South Hams survey where they thought an earlier, epithermal-style phase of mineralisation was present.

Access and law

A disused mine on private ground. Old workings on private land are trespass at best; open shafts, adits and unstable spoil make them genuinely dangerous, and many such sites carry heritage designations.

What we would do

Do not go into or onto the workings. The legitimate interest is the stream draining west of the mine, and only with the landowner's agreement.

North of Dartmoor, Hatherleigh to Crediton

Crediton Trough: Deckport, Solland and Smallbrook

Only with permission

A Permian red-bed basin north of the moor where BGS confirmed gold in drainage for the first time, including what may be a fossil placer.

Evidence
Prospect: Some chance
Access: Private land

Geology

BGS applied the south Devon redox model northwards and it worked. Gold was confirmed at numerous localities on the Permian outcrop, with grain chemistry closely matching south Devon. Rock analyses returned up to 1.8 ppm Au in alkaline basalts and 42 ppb in Permian sedimentary breccias. Around Smallbrook, near Newton St Cyres, the Late Permian Newton St Cyres Breccia is interpreted as a fossil placer, an ancient beach or river deposit that concentrated gold long before the present rivers existed, and which is now shedding grains into the modern streams. The Bow Breccia is the inferred source at Deckport and Solland near Hatherleigh.

Access and law

Ordinary Devon farmland, entirely private, well outside the National Park. No open access. Small streams here are often heavily modified and run through farmyards.

What we would do

Under-appreciated and worth attention precisely because nobody thinks of "north of Dartmoor" as gold country. A fossil placer shedding into a modern stream is the classic set-up for a panner. Permission first.

Look, do not dig 2

Superb places to visit and study. Disturbing the ground is either prohibited or criminal.

Southern Dartmoor, open moor

Erme Head and the upper Erme tin streamworks

Look, do not dig

The most spectacular alluvial tin streamworks on Dartmoor. Historically the sort of ground where tinners found gold flakes, and now essentially untouchable.

Evidence
Prospect: Long odds
Access: Open access land

Geology

Tin streaming on the Erme is documented from the medieval period, with tin enrichment in the valley sediments post-dating a silt layer dated to about 1280 AD. Historical accounts have tinners recovering small gold flakes from exactly this kind of alluvial working and keeping them in bird quills. What the modern geochemistry says, though, is sobering: the Dartmoor granite itself is gold-poor, and the strong, repeatable anomalies are off the moor, not on it.

Access and law

Open access land under the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985, so you may walk here freely. But the National Park byelaws prohibit removing or displacing any soil, peat or stones on access land without reasonable excuse, and prohibit metal detecting without the Authority's permission. Many streamworks are also Scheduled Monuments, where ground disturbance is a criminal offence under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

What we would do

Go, absolutely. It is one of the great industrial-archaeology landscapes in England and the walk up the Erme is superb. Take photographs of the tinners' spoil ridges. Do not take a shovel. The legal exposure here is real and the gold, honestly, is not.

South-west Dartmoor, open moor

Plym valley streamworks and Sheepstor

Look, do not dig

Where the best-known Dartmoor gold anecdote comes from: a tinner named Wellington who allegedly sold £40 of gold to a Plymouth silversmith.

Evidence
Prospect: Long odds
Access: Open access land

Geology

The Plym has some of the most extensive tin streamworks on the moor. The Wellington story (early 1800s, gold found near Sheepstor, £40 from a Plymouth silversmith) is the strongest single historical claim of a meaningful Dartmoor gold recovery. It is also an anecdote recorded second-hand, and £40 of gold at contemporary prices is a great deal of gold for a moorland stream. Treat it as folklore with a plausible kernel.

Access and law

Open access commons, subject to the same byelaws against displacing soil and stone and against metal detecting. Extensive scheduled archaeology.

What we would do

Walk it for the history. If you want to test the Wellington story, the honest way is documentary research in the Plymouth archives, not a shovel on the commons.

Do not attempt 4

Off limits, dangerous, or both. Included because understanding them explains the rest.

South Devon coast, outside the National Park

Hope's Nose, Torquay

Do not attempt

Devon's genuinely famous gold locality: crystalline gold and palladium minerals in calcite veins. Also comprehensively protected.

Evidence
Prospect: Long odds
Access: Protected designation

Geology

Gold and palladium minerals occur in low-temperature hydrothermal carbonate veins cutting Devonian limestone. The dendritic, palladium-zoned gold here is mineralogically the same animal as the grains in South Hams drainage, which is precisely how the regional redox model was pieced together. Specimens from here are in museum collections worldwide.

Access and law

A Site of Special Scientific Interest and a well-known geological conservation site. Hammering, digging or collecting is not acceptable and, without Natural England assent obtained by the landowner, working an SSSI is a criminal offence carrying an unlimited fine.

What we would do

Visit to understand the mineralogy; the veins are visible in the cliff. Take nothing. The site has already been badly damaged by collectors and the geological community's patience with it is exhausted.

South-west Dartmoor fringe, near Plympton

Hemerdon / Drakelands Mine

Do not attempt

The only large working metal mine on the Dartmoor fringe: tungsten and tin, not gold, and an active industrial site.

Evidence
Prospect: Untested
Access: Private land

Geology

A sheeted-vein greisen deposit in and around a granite cupola related to the Dartmoor batholith, worked for tungsten (wolframite) and tin (cassiterite). It is one of the largest tungsten resources in the world outside China. Gold is not a product here, but the site demonstrates that the Dartmoor granite system does concentrate metals in economically meaningful quantities, just not precious ones.

Access and law

An active, licensed, fenced industrial mine site operated by Tungsten West, restarting production. Not accessible. Do not attempt to sample spoil.

What we would do

Relevant as context for what real, permitted, capitalised mineral extraction on Dartmoor's edge looks like. The gulf between that and a man with a pan is the honest answer to "could I mine gold here?".

Exmoor fringe, north Devon

Bampfylde Mine, North Molton

Do not attempt

The only place in Devon ever worked deliberately for gold at scale, and a cautionary tale about believing your best assay.

Evidence
Prospect: Long odds
Access: Private land

Geology

Gold in copper–iron deposits in Devonian rocks. Known from at least the late 18th century, and always identified as the "king's mine". After the Californian rush, the Prince Albert Mining Company approached the Crown for the right to work gold, and Berdan and Perkes amalgamation machines were installed in 1854. Bulk treatment of ore from both Bampfylde and the nearby Britannia Mine recovered no gold at all: the rich assays had been publicised and the poor ones ignored.

Access and law

Private land, surveyed archaeology, dangerous historic workings.

What we would do

The most instructive site on this list. Every optimistic gold story in Devon eventually meets the Bampfylde result. Read about it rather than visit it.

Northern Dartmoor, MOD Dartmoor Training Area

Okehampton Range and the northern moor

Do not attempt

High northern moor with historic mineral workings, sitting inside a live-firing range.

Evidence
Prospect: Long odds
Access: Open access: MOD live-firing range

Geology

The northern moor has genuine historic mineral interest: Sourton Tors, the Okehampton Consols workings, and 19th-century assays that reported traces of gold in gossan. None of it amounts to a modern gold target, and the granite assays that Brammall published in the 1920s reported single-figure grains per ton, which is nothing.

Access and law

Okehampton, Merrivale and Willsworthy Ranges are used for live firing on a licensed number of days per year. Red flags by day and red lamps by night mean do not cross the boundary. If flags are not flying by 09:00 (April–September) or 10:00 (October–March), there is no live firing that day. Check the published six-week firing programme on GOV.UK or ring the freephone number. Unexploded ordnance is a real hazard: do not touch military debris, and never dig.

What we would do

Not a gold target, and the one place on this list where poking about in the ground could actually kill you. Walk it on a non-firing day for the landscape and leave the trowel at home.

What is deliberately not here

We have not published precise sampling coordinates for the strongest South Hams anomalies, for two reasons. They sit on identifiable private farms whose owners did not sign up to being a destination, and the BGS reports that contain them are freely available to anyone prepared to read a survey properly, which is a reasonable filter for whether someone should be out there at all. Every report is linked on the sources page.