Sophie Doyle displays the haul reeled out of a canal by her team of magnet fishers over the course of two days (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

A team of magnet fishers has laid claim to the biggest ever find of cannon balls after hauling more than 300 artefacts from a canal.

Sophie Doyle and her fellow ‘dippers’ spent two days reeling in the vast trove of objects which are thought to date back to the 17th Century.   

The Magnetic Pull team has travelled widely across the UK making highly unusual finds but they believe the sheer scale is a first for the hobby.

After examining the evidence, they believe there is a link between the canal in Cheshire and the British Civil Wars, possibly through the construction process and the proximity of the waterway to key battles.

‘This is a significant find,’ Sophie said.

Sophie Doyle with one of the objects dredged from the canal by her team over the course of two days (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

‘The cannon balls we have recovered from the canal are linked to Oliver Cromwell and were used in battles during the 17th Century.

‘On Mother’s Day, our team found 165 cannon balls and we decided to return to the location to see if there was more to be found.   

‘On Easter Sunday we found another 158, which was just as astounding.   

‘Usually magnet fishers find the odd cannon ball here and there but nothing on such a large scale as this. It’s certainly a first in the history of magnet fishing to find such a large haul.   

‘We really feel like we’ve hit the jackpot making this find.’  

The team’s research shows that Cromwell, who led the Parliamentarian forces during the Civil Wars, stayed in a nearby cottage on August 20, 1648.

A series of major battles took place in Cheshire during the wars, with Chester and Nantwich being the stages for repeated fighting.  

Hundreds of metal balls believed to have been ammunition were hauled from the waterway (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

Sophie, 30, from Bolton, already has a Civil War-era gunpowder grenade in her collection and has repeatedly had to call in police teams after discovering unexploded modern ordnance.  

She has also reeled in firearms and forensic evidence, along with more mundane items such as ironing boards and bits of scrap metal, after taking up her hobby four years ago.

The latest haul is thought to include ammunition of different sizes including ‘grapeshot’ — smaller rounds which were fired out in clusters — which show signs of having been fired in battle. Although the canal was built long after the Civil Wars, Sophie believes ‘puddling’ — where clay was used to lay the foundations of the new waterways — may have transported the ordnance over from another location.

‘The cannon balls were used in the conflict and bear the marks of the battle,’ she said. ‘Some of them are damaged and slightly flattened where they have impacted. Lots of these cannon balls were fired at once in a single shot from a cannon, causing maximum damage and fatalities.’  

Sophie says the thrill of never knowing what you will find is the best part of magnet fishing (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

The team, which has not made the exact location of the find public, now plans to clean the collection and donate some to museums while keeping others as display pieces for their collections.

Sophie’s previous waterside adventures have included dredging up hundreds of mysterious pictures of a newlywed couple, with one of the images appearing to have been taken outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. She has also reeled in evidence in a police cold case, a rusty Victorian safe which took a winch and team effort to remove and a statue of the Hindu Goddess of Death, Time and Doomsday.  

The team use powerful magnets attached to ropes and sometimes grappling hooks on their weekly Sunday outings. They regularly link up with other dippers at sociable organised events around the country and share their adventures on Facebook and YouTube.

‘We do this for environmental reasons and for the thrill of what we’re going to find next,’ Sophie said.   

‘The things we find range from scrap metal to evidence of criminal activity.

‘We work in partnership with Greater Manchester Police for Operation Sceptre, an anti-knife crime campaign, and also visit our local police stations to hand in bladed articles and offensive weapons which we recover. I would encourage anyone to use their local police station’s knife amnesty bin and “bin the blade”. We call in any firearms we find to the police from the scene.’

While the team has protocols for the most volatile items, the hobby is a lucky dip, with a long-spouted cast iron kettle found earlier this month being a more innocent retrieval.  

‘Magnet Fishing is great for physical and mental health, people of all ages and abilities can take part in the hobby,’ Sophie said.

‘The thrill is that when you throw your magnet into the water, something different comes out every time.’  

The Magnetic Pull team: Sophie Doyle (front left) with Beth Chadwick and Dee Hill and (back row) Andrew Jennings, Leigh Mc, Billy Heys, Stephen Smith and Ste Hill (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

Dr Sam Chadwick, visiting lecturer and senior learning technologist at the University of Chester, told Metro.co.uk that while further research is needed the objects do resemble field gun ammunition.

‘On the face of it, it may seem unlikely that 17th Century cannon balls would be found in canals built around a century later,’ he said.  

‘However, as I understand it, they took clay from nearby areas and repurposed it via “puddling”, a process that makes the clay watertight.  

‘These older balls trapped in the 17th Century can then be dredged up by magnet fishing to appear in the later structure.’ 

Sophie enjoys the buzz of magnet fishing as she attends organised events and shares her adventures online (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull) 

Dr Chadwick identified possible types of shot relating to large guns used on 17th Century battlefields, including those deployed by the Parliamentarians’ professional New Model army.   

‘From the images there appears to be four sizes of shot,’ he said.  

‘Without proper measurement, it would be difficult to say for sure, but these look like they are from a Base, a Robinet, a Falconet and a Falcon.

‘They are all small field guns; small, agile artillery pieces designed to be used in battle but often utilised in longer sieges like at Chester.  

‘Without knowing where the original clay is from it is difficult to tell more.  

‘As always, more research is needed.’   

A close-up image breaking out a sample of the scarred finds by the Magnetic Pull team (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

Dr Jonathan Worton, lecturer in history and programme leader for military history at the university, also believes there may be a link to the Civil Wars. 

However neither he nor his colleague were able to make any firm conclusions after viewing photographs and video of the find. 

‘Without any scale to go by, these do not appear to be cannon shot but small arms ammunition,’ Dr Worton said.

‘They could possibly be lead bullets from different kinds of weapon such as the musket, a standard infantry weapon, the carbine, a shortened musket used by cavalry, or the pistol, a main cavalry weapon.

‘That assumes these are from the Civil War period and it appears they may be. The awkward stub on most of the rounds is from the casting process, when the bullets were cut away from the casting sprue.

‘They would then be filed down for a tighter fit in the barrel of the weapon. Bullets are often found in this rougher state, perhaps never fired in anger.

‘These kind of lead bullets remained standard ammunition for civilian as well as military small arms into the 19th Century. But the roughness in finish I remarked on does strongly indicate they are from the Civil War period. 

‘Whatever the answer, it’s an interesting find.’  

The objects are in standardised sizes possibly indicating a time when war was becoming more industrialised (Picture: Sophie Doyle/Magnetic Pull)

Sophie told Metro.co.uk that after close inspection her team had ruled out the possibility that they had retrieved industrial mining balls.

Break-out images of some of the objects, thought to be grape shot, suggest they were blasted out of a firearm and were dented on impact.

The team is going through the reporting processes, which may include sending some of the items to the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

Sophie Doyle and her team ‘hit the jackpot’ with the vast haul of artefacts pulled from the water.