The Contents of a Molehill

Blimey… it’s snowing! Properly snowing!

With nothing open, the roads all but impassable, and with the wind roaring outside, it gives me the perfect excuse to open a bottle of wine, light the fire, and blog some more.

A few weeks ago I went for a walk up the hill and along the path that runs past Whitfield Cross. In the field before the cross, there was what can only be described as an infestation of moles. A big infestation… it looked like it had been bombed!

In the past I have found some very interesting things in molehills – a mesolithic flint flake, a WWI German 7.92mm bullet (in Belgium), and a sherd of 2nd century Roman pottery. I also know of a molehill that produced an Iron Age stater coin (sadly, not mine). So, I never pass a molehill without having a look.

I have to say, this haul was sadly not as impressive as that, but I’m using it to illustrate an interesting historical process, as well as an archaeological phenomenon. But first the haul.

Top left is a rim from a cup or similar open small vessel. Top middle is a from a glass vessel – it is a rim of some form, but is shaped in an odd way, so I think that it comes from the spout of a glass jug. Top right is a brick… plain and simple. Bottom left is a Bakelite comb fragment – the maker’s name is ‘Tudor Rose’, who, as far as I can tell, still make combs. And finally, bottom right is some cinder – essentially what is left after coal has been burned.

So not at all impressive, or even that interesting. The interesting bit lies in the question “how did it get there?”.

Any ploughed field you see, anywhere in Britain, will have a huge amount of pottery and glass lying within the ploughsoil. You can even see it at a distance, glistening in the sunlight. And most fields will have been ploughed at some stage in their history, even if they are pasture land now. So how do these items end up in the ground? There are no brick structures nearby, nor are there any coal fires. It’s an odd place for someone to comb their hair, and even odder for them to serve drinks from a glass jug into a china teacup. If these were found next to a house, the solution would be simple – they are rubbish chucked over the back fence. But this is a middle of a field in the middle of nowhere, and nobody walks into a field to dispose of rubbish.

The solution is night soil. A lovely Victorian euphemism for… well, let’s not beat around the bush. Poo.

In the Victorian and early Edwardian period, and even more recently in certain areas, no one had an inside flushing toilet. One did one’s business into a bucket that was emptied every night by the night soil man, whose job cannot have been a bundle of laughs. Also, as there was no real system for the disposal of domestic waste, if you dropped a plate, you simply chucked it into the bucket, along with glass, coal fire ashes, and anything else that couldn’t be mended or recycled. The night soil man would then come along, remove the bucket and contents, and take it away.

The larger fragments of pottery, etc. would be removed, but no one wants to spend too long picking tiny pieces of pottery out of the waste. What was left over, including the smaller pieces of pottery, etc., would be sold to farmers as fertiliser, and who then spread it onto their fields. A wonderful system of literally wasting nothing, and one that some environmentalists are promoting – better than using artificial fertilisers, apparently. Over time, a huge amount of pottery and other bits would have been ploughed into the soil, which is why so much of it is still visible.

So there you go, the story of how these random bits ended up in a field – the mole simply turned over a night soil fertilised field. I am assuming they originated in Glossop – the town was very densely populated, and there was very little by way of sanitation in the Victorian period. Most houses, being terraced, would have had a shared privy – we have our row’s privy in our garden and it is now used as a shed! But it once served 6 houses, with at least 5 people in each house by the late Victorian period – that’s a lot of night soil!

There is a place in Upholland, Lancashire, next to the canal, where barges full of night soil from Liverpool would be unloaded and spread onto a huge cobbled area there and roughly sorted. It is right next to a pub whose name escapes me, pleasant and rural now, but 130 years ago would have been very different!

Anyway, the moral of the story is always check out molehills (and also any ploughed field), as you never know what might turn up. And don’t worry, 100+ years is a long time for night soil to linger… just don’t think about it, and wash your hands afterwards, just in case!

RH