Norfolk has been named the top place in the country to find buried treasure, according to government figures.

Provisional figures from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) found that the south-east of England was a hotspot for treasure in the statistics which cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In total, Norfolk came out on top with 86 discoveries out of the 265 finds made in the region in 2021.

Behind Norfolk was Kent with 74, Wiltshire with 68 and Hampshire with 67 finds respectively.

There were 1,079 discoveries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2021, making it the eighth year in a row that the number of treasure finds topped 1,000.

A breakdown of the types of objects found in 2021 is not yet available.

Detailed figures available for 2020 show 1,071 treasures were found, including 1,039 finds from metal detecting.

Of reported finds, 876 cases were objects and 195 were coins.

Around a third of objects found and a quarter of the coins were acquired by or donated to museums – totalling 304 additions.

The DCMS figures show the number of reported treasure finds for 2020 and provisional figures for 2021 within England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In 2020, a teen metal detectorist from Great Yarmouth hit the jackpot when he discovered a rare Saxon silver coin.

Reece Pickering was searching a field in Topcroft, near Bungay, with his father when he unearthed the coin, which turned out to be a silver penny from the reign of Harold II and was dated to 1066.

The coin later sold at auction for £4,000 to a UK buyer.

While in March, Jennie Fitzgerald, from Norwich, travelled to north Norfolk to take part in a beach clean between Cart Gap and Happisburgh when she found a chest behind a raised sand bed.

Inside contained coins, trinkets, an engraved matchstick holder, a signet ring and a rusted pocket watch.