TWO early bronze age flat axes unearthed in a farmer's field last summer have been declared as treasure at an inquest in Bradford.

The finds were discovered at an undisclosed location near Silsden last July by hobby metal detectorist Edward Hannon.

Mr Hannon, of Maple Avenue, Thornbury, Bradford, who was not at today's hearing, had received permission from the landowner Philip Wallbank before he started digging on July 19 last year.

The inquest heard Mr Hannon, who is not a member of any detectorist club or group, had started searching for buried antiquities in an area near a spot of land that the farmer had pointed out might be of interest.

It was there that the detector activated and after digging down 18 inches he found the two corroded copper alloy axes side by side - one of them was broken into two parts and decorated with a subtle rain pattern marked as little dashed lines.

The axes were in direct contact with each other with no space in between them, almost overlapping with the blades facing in opposite directions.

Speaking after the inquest, Amy Downes, a finds liaison officer for the Portable Antiquities Service, who had written a report for Coroner Martin Fleming, said it was hard to say exactly how rare the finds were but the axes were not a common discovery - especially in Bradford.

She said in the past 15 years there had only been 133 other treasure finds reported by people using metal detectors in the Bradford area.

"Usually discoveries are made on cultivated land which Bradford doesn't have so much of as other parts of the country, it's more moorland and urban spreads here so it's really nice for this area that these axes have been discovered,"she said.

"Axes were fairly prestigious objects to own and would have been cared for. This wasn't a chance loss, they would have been put in the ground on purpose. The big question is why? Some say it is a ritual thing and others say for some other reason. Often tools were decommissioned, bent or broken first before being laid into the ground but in this case it looks as though one of the axes was accidentally broken."

Miss Downes said she believed the British Museum might be interested in adding them to its collection and the axes would have to be valued by an independent panel so a reward can be shared between the finder and the landowner.

"It's hard to say what that value might be. Museums tend to fight fairly shy of revealing much about that," she said.