Brighton Bottles

Digging up from the bottom of the sea

Diving off the west coast of Scotland where the old paddle steamers used to pull in with holiday makers

who chucked thier empties over the side.

Gordon Short, John Brown and myself have been out once a week

and have already recovered a few goodies and are hoping to find the 'mother load' very soon.

Watch this space and read all our top tips in the new book soon to be published

'BOTTLE DIGGING ADVENTURES'

Gordon with an appropriately embossed Codd

Does anybody know anything about this stopper or the bottle it may have come from?

It was given to Johhny by an old man on the Isle of Bute who said it cam from the bed of a stream that drains into the sea next to the automatic lighthouse at the remote far southern end of the Island. There is a deep water inlet there where he says the Germans used to land a U-Boat to take on water!?! There is no officail record of germans ever having landed on UK siol like this but they did wait in the clyde to ambush shipping I'm told. Any info gratefully recieved.

DON'T EVEN MENTION THE WEATHER!!!

...didn't stop Johnny and I though, we had a slightly sheltered spot;

..well, fairly sheltered. Its a 20's to 50's dump that produces very little

 but there are things that are older that we guess were kept in

the owners houses for years before being thrown out.

We got a few old local milk bottles

Jb got a nice butter crock and I chased away the winter blues

 with a Corry Belfast blue print gb

Its for sale today on ebay!

       Just before Christmas 2008 Johnny and I braved the cold that

came before the snow to dig a small cottage dump and at 8am

on a lovely crisp morning we pulled out some nice bottles,

nothing exceptional but

who can complain when half the population is still in bed!

Barrie Glasgow & Dundee

&

Greenock Appothacaries

A trio of Poisons

I was in Devon last week and heading for the Alton bottle show

 I decided to stop half way at Bridport.

I parked up in town and took a quick look in the river

 and hey presto, fragment ahoy!

as luck would have it I had my chest waders

 and a glass bottomed bucket in the car,

.....never travel without them!

So in I went and before long I had

a pot, 3 codds and sadly onlyhalf of a really nice jug.

Amazing really as I know there are collectors on that area

and yet right under their noses are good items that have

been lying there for over a hundred years

 in just inches of water without being picked up.

I had two of the Acme Patent codds,

 one earlier than the other in paler glass

 with a clear glass marble and full of seed bubbles'

they are;

 J.C.&R.H.Palmer( late Job Legg) Bridport

 and unusually have

BREWER, WINE & SPIRIT MERCHANTS

embossed down the left and right side of the bottles.

So after, hopefully, clearing the river of all goodies visible

 I headed to Alton to rest up for the night and go to the show.

I wasn't really expecting to find anything for my Brighton collection

 but was more intent on collecting a bottle

 that Russ Parkin had polished for me,

 by coincidence, also found in a river!

I had been up to my waste at low tide in Lewes raking the riverbed for clay pipes,

...as you do, haha!

...and up came the most outragous ink,

it had swirls of dark green like I've never seen,

 a bit misty from rolling arround in the river but after cleaning its a beauty.

now while I was drooling over this I missed a cracking Brighton bottle,

actually I saw it in passing

 but without my glasses on and thought it was a Bolton item!

After the show a wicked Fireman from Lewes, 

who shall remain nameless,..Rob,...

 sent me a phone photo of the item to rub salt in the wound

 and for a couple of hours I was kicking myself

 but the trueth was my good pal Dave had bought it for me and here it is;

the Stephen Green pottery mark being c1858

Most folk went home then but I had one more mission,

a friend from the Hastings area called to say I was invited to

try the magic bucket in a river where he had recovered

 a few Woodcock Hastings pictorial codds,

well we gave it a go and had a great day out and I did get 'woody'

 but not even a fragment of a woodcock(almost 4 figure value) ginger beer.

The water was cloudy, deep and fast running

but the glass bucket did work really well

 and if there had of been aone in there then I would have found it.

Never the less we got a few interesting bits,

met a few locals and Bran fell in and got a good wash!

A good weekend had by all but cant wait to get home and dry out.

Last chance before xmas duties and a break in the weather so I headed for a little tidal creek near my house where I had spotted some fragments in the summer. Take a look at the photos and you will see that there really aren't any obvious signs of a tip but this is on the edge of a village and there MUST be one somewhere. After reading this story and looking at the photos I hope you will all rush out and look hard at the nearest similar site with renewed enthusiasm,.......actually I hope you all stay at home watching TV so I can have all the goodies to myself!

 Seriously, get your wellies on and go find treasure, it's out there!

First look at the photo of the area next to the wall on the right 5 feet ahead of me, ..the little pile of stones!

 In Victorian times the wall wasn't there, just a grassy bank and I suspect rubbish was just thrown down it and into the mud. Years have passed and the tip has washed flat. The fragments are there to be seen on top if you look hard enough.

 A few expeimental digs later and I had established that there was a seam of bottles etc. about 10 yrds long 4 feet wide and about a foot thick and just 3 inches or so beneath the surface! I dug an area about 4 feet by 2 feet and got a whole bucket full before the light fadded.Note the difference between the river bed as it was in the distance and the one fork load I had turned over in the foreground!

Here are some of the finds....

 Nothing amazing but great fun and "I'll be back" ...by the way did you know that that saying of  Arni Shwartzniger's ( however you spell it), was stolen by he from Uri Gagarin who uttered the words just before entering his space capsule!

Today I went to the Estuary at low tide to look for bottles etc.

 at a spot below the old dump just out of town.

(see 'tools of the trade' page)

My wife took the photo of me looking like a hungry Heron!

Note the water; very shallow but always cloudy here ,

the only chance of seeing anything on the bottom is to use the bucket.

The dump was grassed over many years ago but an old chap told me

 that as a child he used to play on the rubbish with other children and

  the sport was to see who could skim a potlid the furthest across the water

so I shall be searching this place every two weeks over the winter

when the tides are low enough to get in.

Today I got the first one in less than a minute!!!

(..all be it the worlds most common type)

Note the photo taken from inside the bucket when I first spotted the lid,

you have to jam your face into the thing so as to cut out the light and reflection,

Ive positioned the glass very close to the lid to show it in the photo

but you can see to qite a depth even in cloudy water once you get used to it.

Its not as easy as it looks but without the bucket you would never find a thing

and in deeper water with chest waders its really essential.

'Eddie' the digging mascot looks on,.......on holiday from Scotland!

He was dug up there some years ago by my mate Johnny 'Bottles' Brown

and he spends his days travelling up and down the country

going on digs with us and bringing good fortune..... 

......well,..Bob Gerrard has a lucky hat.......I'll get a photo of it one day!

These little treasure troves are dotted all over the UK

The one I have photographed here is in Devon

but I have found them in Sussex,Cumbria and Scotland.

They were used long ago to heat up limestone so as

to be able to easily break it up into powder to

spread on the fields to make acidic soil more productive.

The part I have photograhed is the oven, a fire was built in there

and the chalk was piled into a large opening above which

was heated by the flames going up the chimney.

After the fire went out the crumbled chalk fell down the flue

and was shovelled out,bagged up and carted away.

When they fell into disuse locals used them to dispose

of household rubbish which can be shovelled out under gravity

just like the chalk was!!!

Last weekend I went to a site by the M5 motorway north of Exeter.

It had obviously been dug over the years but may,I thought, have a few goodies left in it.

It's in a swamp so infested with midges and mosquitos that it's almost unbearable

 and I half expected an Aligator to appear and drag me away!

There's a mix of stuff on the surface and in the hour I spent there I found 1890's sheared lipped sauces and inks,

 1910's Codds(broken) and 1930....well crap, if you'll excuse the language?

Of interest were the aqua Exeter codds,

 though what I was really looking for were the CLEAR GLASS versions,

probably the best of the few clear glass Codds in the UK.

Also of interest was a Baby feeder I havent seen before; Nurse Margery's

...and next to a Granny's sauce an 'UP-TO-DATE' sauce.

Half a Unoion Jack enamel sign,

... and the top of a really nice Early flagon.

Best find of the day?

My hat full of the years first Blackberries!

Someday soon I'll hit the 'Mother load'

Watch this space!

While the rest of the population headed for the beach yesterday...

Bob, Will, Ron and yours truely went into a  1940's

stinging nettle jungle on a wild goose chase

but much fun was had. Will dug his frst ever bottle, (2oz poison)

and Bob played a tune on a Guitar he found in the woods!

...actually thats the sum total of what we got but at least we tried.

"Happiness is a c1900 refuse dump"

.......anyone for tea?

This sign cleaned up remarkably well as did some rare bottles

from this Victorian dump just inches under the grass.

Usually the bottles etc. that I/we seek are buried under ground

but they can sometimes be found in rivers.

 My favourite hunting grounds are estuary mudflats and tidal creeks which,

 in years gone by, were used as dumping grounds and are generally

overlooked by 'ordinary' folk due to the shite one has to wade thru!!!

Here's my digging pal John 'Jonnibottles' Brown

with a Scottish creampot from the brown stuff. 

This horrible little river produced some real treasures including this

previously unrecorded blue lipped mineral water bottle

from Strachan Aberdeen.

It looks a bit scuffed but its mint!

The markings are thousands of bubbles in the glass.

***A most dangerous place to look for bottles***

I have been digging for bait, fishing, bird watching and finally bottle hunting

in tidal eatuaries for 40 yrs and have had many near misses but in Rye harbour

I came as close to death as you could get,... several times!

Please take care if you follow my footsteps!

Three rivers meet at rye harbour and all drain into the tidal section with

their flow controlled by automatic sluice gates so

apart from the obvious mud hazard there is the threat of a sudden deluge.

I was caught by one of these and taken a mile down stream and almost out to sea!

while staggering back thruogh the mud I picked up these;

These two codd bottles from Colebrook's of Rye

 have a pictorial of a Gaff Rigged Trawler marked RX1

This boat belonged to my friends Grandfather c1901

here is an old photo of her going to sea.

...and another of her coming in at Hastings,

My friend Ian writes;

Steve, Ron, Bob & Dave

digging at Lewes.

This enamel sign was found searching a river with a glass bottomed bucket.

I had to go back for the post & frame, which had broken up...

...but it went back together well and the sign cleaned even better.

The next day I found an earlier one from the Highland Railway Co.

Both of these were in the water beside a railway bridge so

I guess they were tossed in by the workmen replacing them.

...just back from a holiday in the Lake District and you guessed it,..

...found a dump!

The Son of our friend near Keswick said,

 " there are some old bottles down the path from here"

we wasted no time and were straight into goodies,

we guess about 1920's to 40's

11 yr old Yens dug a great local beer within minutes!

Maxwell & Co Whitehaven

with running dog trade mark; (fell racing hound we think?)

Several other nice little items were dug including;

 a stoneware ink, green ribbed poison, amber Virol!

Thats it lads, he's hooked! We have a new member Haha!

A happy time was had by all, even the dog had a go!!!