Pamela Bent admits to stealing £100,000 from Sedgeford dig

Pamela Bent of James Close, King's Lynn, is charged with committing fraud by abuse of position between July 3, 2019 and August 3, 2023.

It was while she was treasurer of SHARP - the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project.

Bent is also charged with false accounting between the same dates.

She admitted the charges when she appeared at Norwich Crown Court this week and will be sentenced in October.

Outside court, Bent told the BBC she had apologised to SHARP.

The SHARP dig at Sedgeford (Image: Chris Bishop)

The charity, whose work is funded by donations, has been carrying out digs at Sedgeford each summer for more than 25 years.

This year's excavations had to be scaled back from the usual six weeks to four because of financial problems.

In a statement, SHARP said: "In the final week of the 2023 season, the newly elected committee began to suspect there were serious financial irregularities in the SHARP accounts and finances over several years.

"Since the season, together with the police, the new SHARP committee and trustees have been working hard to determine the nature and cause of these irregularities.

"This revealed a substantial amount of SHARP's money unaccounted for.

"In light of these events, we started this year with little in the way of contingency funds and although we are hopeful that we will break even, we are still being hampered by increased hire costs.

"We are however confident with the new committee and trustees taking the reins, and new procedures in place, that SHARP will survive this incident and go forward into the future."