I will never forget my introduction to a site known simply as Makro, .My one-time digging colleague, Ron Hornsey of Sale took me down one spring Sunday, the best part of fifteen years ago. "I wouldn't get your hopes up" Ron muttered as we walked down the long path. "With luck, you may find a couple of Hailwoods creams and maybe the odd codd or ginger". Lady Luck was about to prove Ron very, very wrong. We all chose a spot to dig in what we all believed to be a filled-in ditch on the edge of a farmer's field. It wasn't deep, only about three feet before clay was reached. I had just cleared out my hole, ready for caving in when I was joined by Ron and his two mates As they watched, I banged my fork into an ash wall, and exposed one of those white pots with a wide mouth "Wouldn't this be a joke if it turned out to be a Pratt ......." I never finished the sentence. Four audible gasps of amazement greeted the arrival of a beautiful multicoloured Prattware fishpaste pot, as it rolled onto the tines of my fork.It had a charming fishing scene that I later learned was titled "Mending the Nets". What a find and after it had been lovingly passed around like a new born baby, the other diggers turned quickly around to return to their respective holes, suitably inspired by my lucky find.Having got my breath back, I carried on caving-in but found no other items. I then enlarged the hole, cut out some more turf and began clearing out the hole again. Reaching the clay was the sign to bring the fork back into action again, and I decided to cave far under the hole. I exposed the bases of two large black whisky bottles. When I pulled them out, I then noticed the base of a brown pot. Carefully digging around the pot, I noticed that it seemed a funny shape. As I began to loosen it from the surrounding ashes, a thought crossed my mind. Could it possibly be ? I had my answer when I held it out in the bright light of day. YES !!! It was a transfered whisky jug, A Doulton example as well, complete with a good pictorial scene. When I showed this to my three fellow diggers there was an outright groan. They just couldn't believe my luck. I also managed to find several transfered creams and Virols on my first day on Makro but in more than one hundred return trips to this site I was never to be so lucky again.
For a couple of years return trips were made to dig in the "ditch". We all knew better than annoy the farmer, who would come along and dump a pile of mouldy old carrots in your hole if you got too close to his field. When the "ditch" was dug out, our attentions turned to a nearby associated site, separated from Makro by a scrapyard. This was definitely later in date, probably 1920's. I dug this site, with some friends for the best part of a year. The best finds here fell to other people and they included Zara's, coloured marble codds, green Warners, matchstrikers, dated, blue print Arthur Edge ginger beers and a nice brewery coaster. You were absolutely guaranteed creams, gingers and codds here. My last good find here was a half pint green Warners Nervine. We thought we would be able to dig the site for years, after all it was the size of about five football pitches. Then word leaked out and diggers came from everywhere. In the space of three months, the entire field turned from green to black. Our site had gone! During the invasion period many more good finds were made, including a reported submarine poison and a blue top buttercup cream as well as an enormous number of cream pots.
I didn't think a return to Makro was on the cards but it kept calling me back. A rumour spread that the field next to the ditch was going have a new road built on it AND somebody had discovered that the ENTIRE field was in fact a tip. The "ditch" now started to extend into the field at a rapid rate. Many diggers from far afield came to dig the site. It seemed at times that half of Yorkshire descended on a Sunday ! It was not unusual to find 50 to 100 diggers hard at work on a weekend. Numerous good finds now started to emerge, including previously unknown items. These included a new coloured Manchester codd. This was a 10oz example used by Mendel Lapidus of Strangeways, Manchester . Complete with attractive Peacock trade mark, it came in a definite shade of green, probably best described as a smoky olive green. Some good Manchester Hospital poisons were also found.
The digging at this site looked set to continue but fate intervened in the shape of an ash-reclamation scheme. Almost overnight, the site was levelled and large pits were dug out to form lagoons for storing water. This water was used in the washing of the recovered ash. Strange machinery and conveyor belts then joined the numerous Hymacs and trucks.Very soon, the operation was in full swing, with the Hymacs lifting out enormous buckets of ash (complete with bottles) onto conveyor belts. These passed the ash into a strange rotating cylindrical sieve which separated the ash from everything else. The operators were not interested at all in the bottles or lids. They would make their money from selling the reclaimed ash. However, some people saw an opportunity here, and either bought bottles from the workers or managed to stand by the conveyor belts, removing and keeping any items they found. This caused an awful lot of ill-feeling amongst the local digging fraternity, especially when at least one person claimed to have "Sole rights to all bottles on the tip". He would, no doubt , have been upset to learn that the hand diggers returned to the site whenever they could. This was usually when the workers went home, on an evening, on Saturday afternoon or on a Sunday. More finds than ever before came out at this time and surprisingly enough, quite a few were still dug by hand. This included such gems as a Dosteels pot lid and a half-pint aqua Warners.One end of the site proved extremely deep, probably about 20 to25 feet deep, and into water too. This would never have been hand-dug in any event, so the machinery did bring up items that would not have been find by the diggers. Ash recovery carried on for more years than I can remember. Gradually the diggers faded away as fewer and fewer items were found. Makro became a fall-back site.A place to go to only when you had absolutely nowhere else to go.
I had my final dig at this site many years ago. One cold Sunday in January 1993, I decided to go out for a few hours and thought I would chance Makro. I walked down the old path to the Ship Canal, looking for an undug patch on the very edge of the tip. I found a very small untouched area and set to work. It was quite a novelty to cut turf here! I reached the bottom at about three feet. My last dig simply could not be compared with my first. I found a couple of poisons, half a dozen minerals and beers, and the usual aqua bulk and stoneware I had one half-decent find. This was a pictorial ginger beer for John Blackburn, Failsworth. It had an unusual pictorial ; three plants were depicted -Dandelion, Burdock and Sarsaparilla. This bottle now sits proudly in my local collection of ginger beers. Not far away can be found my Doulton whisky jug and my Prattware paste pot.