You never can tell!!
For five years I had known about a local dump but I never gave it much attention . Why ? Mainly because I believed it be of 1930's vintage. Meanwhile, I was travelling past this site, travelling all over the country in search of a dig. Sometimes I would drive for five hours and then get nothing at the end of the day. One day I decided to check out a piece of ground near home. I drew a blank, there was no dump there at all. Disappointed, I passed the slope of the 1930's site on my way home and curiosity got the better of me. I decided to have a scrape around with my fork. Straight away I started to uncover bits of glass and broken plates. On one piece of plate I noticed a diamond registration mark - a little early for a 1930's tip! A couple of broken bottle necks had that early look to them too.
The following weekend found myself and my son having a proper dig on the site.On the Sunday morning at 8.00am we were hard at work pulling out the brambles from the slope. We were soon digging into nice looking ash. After an hours digging we had our first pot-lid, a very early Mrs Williams Nutritive Cream, Leamington . This lid can be dated to the 1870's. We also came across broken beers and chemist bottles from our town that were previously unknown. Now, we were dreaming - of early codds, porters, slab seals etc. We dated the dump from 1860 to 1900 with 90% of the items being from 1880 -1890. The ash had clearly been well-scavenged before being dumped.. The site itself was about thirty yards long by eight yards wide and it had a ditch running its entire length. We estimated the ditch was about 1870's. The tip ranged in depth from three feet at the edge to fourteen feet at the end. Some parts had a two foot to ten foot capping.
On some digs you could find four or five pot-lids every time plus plenty of bulk. Out of a total of twenty digs, we never failed to find a lid of some kind. The best dig ever fell to my son while digging on his own. He had bottomed out at nine foot and started digging into the face of the tip.Suddenly, out popped a very early flat top lid. It was A Breidenbachs Cold Cream to Her Majesty, Prince Albert and Duchess of Kent . This lid had to be pre-1861 as Prince Albert died in that year. It is different to the one in Ron Dale's book .He followed this by digging two Burgess lids, one Comman's of Bath ,a Blanchflower Barrel lid, followed closely by three Blanchflower Fishing Boat lids. Last of all came a Blanchflower farmyard scene with a piece missing from the face. The lids all came out of the top four foot of the dump - some people have all the luck!
My memorable finds from this site were a blue print Gosnell's lid, blue print Fish Sauce warehouse lid, and a hinge-mould G P Roby green sauce bottle. The latter is a very rare Leamington bottle. In the heartbreak section were the following ; A rare diamond registration cottage ink with two cracked windows,a chipped tea-kettle ink, half an amber ovate, two broken blue Goffe's round based minerals and a broken copper blue ovate. I always find it interesting to make a list of all the items I dig up from bottle dumps, especially local ones. For that reason I am able to share with you exactly what came off this site. And finally ....... always have at least two digs on dumps you think are too modern. You never know, you could be in for a nice surprise !!!
by Burt Allsopp
Just some of the more interesting finds;
2 Barrel inks , 1 vertical , 1 horizontal
2 Cottage ink, reg diamond, two windows
2 Tent inks with diamond registration
2 Lamp shape glass ink
2 Teakettle aqua igloo pattern inks
2 Sealed French wine bottles
1 shearlip hand figural perfume
2 Cobalt Goffe's Birmingham Potash bottles
1 Roby, Leamington, green hinge mould sauce
1 small Twibells furniture polish pot -pictorial
1 early pig-snout gin
1 stone jar, John Payne & Son Cape Gooseberries
1 Jar,Weston's & Westall's Superior British Table Salt.
3 Holloways ointments
and a total of 84 printed pot lids