Isn't it strange how a chance conversation can lead to things ? Perhaps a chat over a coffee at work or a snippet of information in a pub can lead to interesting bottle finds. This happened to me quite recently.
Being interested in local history, not to mention the fact that I am a devout bottologist, I love to explain my hobby and interests to other people. They may never have heard of a codd bottle or a pot-lid. To my wife, its all been heard before but I cannot hide my enthusiasm. Christmas 1993 found me at a friends house for a party, and I got talking (after a few beers) to a couple we had met. The conversation was steered towards bottles. The evening and the party passed by and then, four months later came a telephone call, almost literally out of the blue. "Hi ... its Debbie, you know we met at the party ....My mum and dad have just bought a new house at Tibshelf in Derbyshire ... the town's Victorian dump is on their land and dad wants to know if you want to dig on it !!!!! I nearly dropped the telephone!
That weekend, I went with Debbie and her husband to her parents new home.I was shown a grassed meadow at the rear of the smallholding. Sure enough, the tell-tale signs were there. As the field sloped away to a stream, the grass gave way to dry nettles and spindly grass and the stream bank was lined with gnarled elderberry trees. I chose a spot, pushed in my fork, and to my utter surprise, out came a whole 6oz codd, "Randall, Chesterfield ". Within two hours, I had seven codds and a flagon. Wow, what a start! Looking around, I noticed a few depressions in the tip. Obviously, there had been some digging activity. I discovered later that the previous owners had given another digger permission to excavate there. This person (who obviously had little idea of how to properly excavate a dump) had "bomb-holed" here and there. As a result, he had not found anything particularly exciting.
Alan Brown holds up a half pint green and a pint amber Rheumatic Warners Safe Cure - dug at Tibshelf
Over the next four months, I systematically started to excavate one corner of the dump, which averaged six to ten feet deep. It quickly became apparent that a small mining community like Tibshelf , was not going to produce quality items in any quantity. Pot lids turned out to be nonexistent and ginger beers were few and far between. However, it did make a welcome change. I had my car safely parked of the road and I had sole permission to dig the site. I was therefore content with my regular bags of codds and minerals.
In late August came some bad news. The owner had bought some sheep and wanted to know when I would complete my digging as he needed the meadow. The worrying aspect of this was that I was not even one-quarter of the way through the tip. I decided to make use of the services of a JCB and subsequently level the ground to the owners satisfaction. On September 17th some friends and I excavated the remainder of the area. As we now had the services of a JCB, large trenches were dug out. This proved that the tip had been infill for a clay pit which varied in depth from two to fourteen feet. We also found it had been filed in over two time periods ; The lower parts of the tip around 1906/7 and the upper portion (which contained 80% of the articles ) from about 1910/11.
Most of the bottles came from the surrounding towns of Alfreton, Chesterfield and Sutton in Ashfield. The dominance of the codd in the mineral trade in the area certainly seemed to be waning. Most of the larger firms seemed to be using screw and chisel stoppered mineral bottles. We did locate a few crown stoppered bottles, which at the time, must have been something of an innovation .. No full ovate minerals were found, only a few fragments turned up. Clearly its days had gone by the age of this tip. We had expected to find blue top Cadogan ginger beers from Mansfield and the famous eight sided Mettham codds from the same town. In the event, only fragments of the latter were found. I have provided below a record or analysis of our finds. Numbers in brackets denote numbers of broken items.
Finds at Tibshelf
Codds - 70 (100)
Minerals 200 (300)
Beers 200 (300)
Ginger Beers 3 (20)
Flagons 2 (10)
Ointment pots 5
Dollsheads 5
Pot lids 1
Best Finds
Pint Warners Safe Rheumatic Cure, dark brown
Half pint Warners Safe Cure, dark green
Slab seal porter - Russell, Malton
2 pontilled oil lamps
1 pontilled clearglass cruet
Mrs Croft's ointment, Chesterfield
18 sided cobalt master ink
Stone vets bottle - Bland, Alfreton
Bungalow footwarmer
By Neil Apsinshaw