A hoard of more than 5,000 Anglo Saxon coins worth £1m (more than €1.27m) have been unearthed by a metal detector enthusiast in Buckinghamshire.

The coins, dating back to the 11th century and thought to be one of Britain's biggest ever finds, were dug up in a lead bucket two feet under a farmer's field near Aylesbury.

The discovery was made by Paul Coleman from the Weekend Wanderers Detecting Club, who has been a keen metal detector for 40 years.

Mr Coleman, from Southampton, was taking part in a Christmas dig on 21 December when he found the 5,251 coins featuring the heads of kings Ethelred the Unready and Canute.

"I could see one silver disc just shining so I bent down just to pick that one disc up and behind it at that point I could focus down a dark hole and I could see lots of other little grey shapes, all circular, and I pretty much knew at that point it was a hoard," he said.

"I knew at that point it was something big."

The coins will now be examined by the British Museum and a coroner will rule if they count as "treasure" under the 1996 Treasure Act.

An independent valuation will be carried out, and the museum could then buy the coins with the proceeds being split between the finder and the landowner.

Fellow metal detector enthusiast and dig organiser Peter Welch said: "We had over 100 people searching the land.

"We didn't expect to find this find there.

"It was just a bit of luck Paul found it."

He added: "This has made history - the scale of the find.

"I think the archaeologists will get a lot of information from these coins."

The find is thought to rival that of Anglo Saxon treasure found in a field near Lichfield in Staffordshire in July 2009.

You can see pictures of the find on the Weekend Wanderers Detecting Club's website.