Can You Dig It?

 Responding to Woodsy's post about Clay Pipe walks, here are a few of the bits i've picked up while roving. The larger of the two glass bottles was found while walking to work at the Southport Hospital, a tree root had dislodged the bottom corner of the bottle and the green glass caught my eye. Backheeling it a bit with my boot, loosened the soil and to my amazement, up popped a complet bottle. the other one is an old clock oil bottle from my dad's shed.

One again from Southport, while I was working in one of the outlying offices in a converted Edwardian townhouse, I was waiting outside the building for a delivery. Being naturally curious and more than a bit of a magpie, I was examining the wall around the front garden and for some reason my attention fell on the gap between the two curved stones finishing the top of the wall. As most of the mortar had been eroded by the weather, there was a deep cleft and tucked down inside was a coin. 

A bit of patient fiddling with a twig extracted it and I found it was an old penny. It was seriously worn and used and I could just make out the date. Trouble is, I also now have three other old pennies, so I can't recall which one it is! I suspect though, its the one on the top right of the picture, covered in verdigris from being exposed to the acidic rain over the years. So that would make it a 1913 strike, which would fit nicely with the age of the house. How it got there I have no idea.

In the same building, there was a large room which was used as a video cassette library and it had large steel shelving installed. To make more room, I decided to remove an old wooden mantel from around a covered fireplace on the main wall. As the screws came away, a shower of old postcards fell out from the twenties and thirties, which had obviously been left on the mantel by previous tenants, only to gradually slip down behind the wood over the years. For some reason, I never kept them, now I wish I had done!

The cellar of the building was a treasure trove too, loads of old patient record cards and disused medical and dental equipment, stacked up gathering dust from the sixties and seventies, it was like stepping back in time.