Lean Town Part 2 – The Finds

Welcome back to Part 2.

I love Lean Town – it’s a good walk from my house (even Master Hamnett can do it with the minimum of fuss… mostly), and yet feels oddly distant. The houses are beautiful, and I sometimes feel a tiny pang of jealousy as I pass, so it’s nice to finally do this blog post that has honestly been years in the making. Part 2 is the finds.

As you can see from the above photograph, the houses are perched on the edge of a steep slope. Now, in the Victorian period, there was no rubbish collection – all household waste that couldn’t be fed to livestock, burned in the fire, reused, repaired, sold for scrap, or spread on the food crops, had to be disposed of by the individual. Now, I’ve probably mentioned this before, but humans are essentially lazy creatures. Almost as a rule, they will take only two considerations into account when disposing of rubbish: 1) can I see it? 2) can I smell it?

With this in mind, you can usually tell where a waste dump – or midden – will be by studying the area and asking a simple question: where would I put the it to get it out of my sight and smell, but with the minimum amount of hassle? Houses, situated on a steep slope, hmmm… there’s only one place they would chuck it. Any thoughts?

That’s right, well done, you guessed correctly and win a sherd of pottery (please email me with an address if you want it… I have many!). Over the back wall went the rubbish, and on the footpath below that wall went I. And by Jove, what a trove! This was all lying on the surface on the footpath that would have originally led from the houses to the well. Between myself and Master Hamnett we cleared out all we could see, but wait for the next rainfall, and more will pop up.

So, what did we get? The short answer is masses of early Victorian to Edwardian bits and pieces – woo hoo! I divided the slope area into two sections: one directly below the back wall of the houses, and one a little further west along the slope.

Truthfully, they are both rubbish dump areas from the same set of houses, but old archaeological habits die hard, and it is easier to keep them separate than it is to re-separate them if I needed to after joining the groups. In pottery analysis we call this “splitting” as opposed to “lumping” – once lumped, pottery is almost impossible to split.

I’m only going to discuss the ‘interesting’ sherds here – there is a lot of it (see pictures above), and life is too short. As a pottery specialist, I have a system that I follow when studying pottery, the short version of which is that I look at only ‘feature’ sherds (bases, rims, handles, and decorated sherds), and discount the rest (there is also a very much longer version, believe me… I can talk for hours about it).

So then, here we are with the interesting bits. First up, below the houses:

Top row: glass side to a square sauce bottle – possibly HP sauce, but certainly very common in the Late Victorian period; one can’t help but think their food was quite bland. Upper rim is from an open bowl, possibly a cooking pot. It measures 20cm in diameter, and is glazed in what appears to be a slip-ware glaze, which puts it late 18th early 19th century. Lower rim is from a stoneware open bowl with a flat lip, measuring 24cm in diameter – probably a mixing or serving bowl, and mid-19th Century in date. Next to that, the top to a stoneware ink or beer bottle, mid to late 19th Century – I love this, aesthetically, it just so pleasing. Next to that a very fine impressed mug or tankard, 10cm in diameter, with purple glazed body. This is very delicate and fine, and the impressed pattern is lovely, it’s possibly Wedgwood, but if not it would nonetheless have been expensive – which makes me think.

On the left we have a large sherd from a pancheon (a large milk or mixing bowl), with the interior, rim, and upper exterior surface glazed. Here we can see the upper exterior, with the classic dripped surface, which, rather than it being the result of a mistake, is a deliberate decoration. This example is very interesting, as it has been given a manganese ‘mottled ware’ glaze, rather than the usual black, which makes me think this is an early example – mid to late 18th Century, I would say. You can see a more common black example next to it, complete with external drips. Sherds from pancheons are quite common, due in part to most people having one, but also to the fact that they are large (larger examples can be 60-70cm across), which means they produce many sherds when broken. The clay they are made from is always reddish-orange, with pale yellow or grey folds badly mixed into it – don’t ask me why, but it is always so.

Above the black pancheon sherd is a sherd of our old friend the feather edged ware bowl. It is another rather nice pearlware vessel, measuring perhaps 20cm in diameter, and was probably a shallow bowl with a flat edge. I have recently done some research on this type, and suggest a date of 1800-1830 for when this was made, which fits perfectly. A quick archaeological aside: when made, and when thrown away are two very different things – I have some of my grandmother’s crockery which I still use, and which must be at least 70 years old. Heirlooms like this do crop up in archaeology, and can cause problems, but generally, I would suggest that 10 years is probably a good innings for an average plate or bowl, especially when you remember there were few carpets and a lot of stone flagged floors.

The green glass fragment has the letter ‘F’ impressed on it, and is late Victorian or later. Next to that is a base to a delicate pearlware eggcup, measuring 4cm. Again, this is quite nice, as is the pearlware base and rim next to it (rim diameter of 18cm so a small plate or soup bowl). There are some spongeware sherds, and some blue and white transfer printed bits, including a green example which quite frankly shows how crappy some of these mass produced pots are – if you look closely, this one has a broken transfer roughly fitted together before being glazed. Above this, there is a moulded base to another very fine 18th Century tankard or mug. Below that, there is a creamware moulded bowl rim, probably quite early (1790-1800?), and again probably quite expensive. Finally, we have a group of stoneware vessels – bowls, storage jars, and the like. These are fairly standard, with impressed decoration (flowers, rouletting, and undulating lines), and date to, well, the Victorian period – made continuously, they were very utilitarian and common.

Next…

Top left, is a large, rounded stoneware bottle or closed shape of some sort – beer, perhaps? Certainly Victorian in date. Next to it is a black ware sherd, with an inscibed decorative band on the exterior, and dating to the late-18th and early 19th centuries. The shiny glaze is the result of lead being added. Far right on the top row is a salt-glazed stoneware sherd, again from bottle, and you can just make out where it forms into the neck. This is interesting, as it looks like it is a continental stoneware – imported gin, perhaps? Below that is a base fragment from a small sauce or syrup bottle – the glass is early, judging by the colour, so perhaps mid-Victorian, but do continue into the 1920’s. These are normally hand blown into a mould, and have a rough rim where it is cracked off the mouth piece – check out a good example here. Actually, the whole website What The Victorians Threw Away is an amazing resource – essentially run by another lunatic like me, if you like this blog, you will love that whole project… it’s basically what I would like to do if I had the time and money (donations always gratefully recieved!).

To the left of that is a pair of feather edge fragments, both on a pearl ware background, and both of the same age as the above example. Below these is a clear glass cup with a handle; it’s moulded not cut glass, but is nonetheless quite nice and fancy.  Below and left of this is a sponge ware sherd, possibly from a plate, and probably dating to the 1850’s. Above that (ignoring the tiny sherd) is a large fragment of a stoneware jam jar, and to the left of that is a large stoneware storage jar. The base diameter of this is 20cm, which makes it a monster – possibly a cider flagon, or similar. What is interesting is that it has a lot of wear on the bottom, meaning that it has been taken off and on a shelf or floor many times, and suggesting that it was refilled.

Below that is a large, roughly made, sherd from a large (2lb) stoneware jam jar, with the characteristic vertical fluting – once recognised, always seen! This has part of the base intact, with the words “ANCH” impressed into it.

Unless it was ‘ANCHOVIES’, this could only be “MANCHESTER”, and thus it has to be a Whittaker & Son’s jar, the base of which would have originally looked like this:

Love it! Moving on, below this, there are some random sherds, including four interesting ones. Top right, with the black tree on a brown background, is actually from a Mocha Ware pot, and would have originally looked something like this:

The tree like effect is created by applying, amongst other things, tobacco juice to the slip, where it spreads to create the effect you can see. In terms of date, it begins to be made in the late 18th century, but this is probably early Victorian. There are other Mocha Ware sherds throughout the pile I found in Lean Town (for example, the sherd immediately below this one, or the two sherds below the bottle top in the first photograph), so it seems to have been quite popular here.

In the middle of the group is a base to a pearl ware bowl – quite fine, again, and small, with a base diameter of 6cm. Bottom left is an open bowl of mid-late 18th century date, in a slip-ware glaze. Right of that is another very fine tankard with a moulded base, and dating again to the late 18th century. To the right of the group, there is a delicate blue painted porcelain fragment, again thin and very fine, and quite expensive. To the right, we have some clay pipes – nothing interesting there, I just like them! Below them there is some more of the brown glazed stoneware – bowls and jars, and including a handle from a hefty jug, which in my mind was filled with frothy home-made ale (but then, to be fair, most thing in my mind are).

That’s the end of the pottery, but now for the other material. In archaeology we make a distinction between what we call ‘bulk finds’, that is, material (usually pottery) that occurs in large quantities, and ‘small finds’, which are individual items, unique to the site or objects that can tell us more about the site than the bulk finds. Often there is overlap – a piece of pottery with an inscription, for example – and usually the small finds are what most people would call ‘the goodies’! And so it is here:

The stone on the left is, I think, a whetstone, used for sharpening knives. It is flat on both sides, worn on the surface and edges, and is the perfect shape, size, and stone type. It was probably discarded after being dropped and broken. Top is a glass stopper from a rather nice serving jar or wine carafe. It’s very delicate and beautiful – hand blown and hollow, with delicate cuts to give it a texture and grip around the top. Below this are a pair of marbles – right is brown glass with a white ribbon running through it – it’s worn, well loved, and certainly late Victorian. Left is a small, roughly made, ceramic marble, partly glazed and misshapen. Possibly early Victorian in date. Bottom is a tiny (2mm) glass bead, possibly from a decorated bag or similar. It’s lovely, and one assumes it was lost in the house, swept up, and thrown away with the rubbish. Don’t ask me how I spotted it… it just stood out against the soil.

So there we have it, Lean Town via the rubbish it once threw away, but what can we say? Firstly, the date. A lot of the material dates to the late 18th and early-mid 19th century, that is to the first decades of people living in the houses here. This is interesting, and suggests perhaps that in the late Victorian period, they buried most of their rubbish elsewhere. The second thing that stands out is the quality of the material – it better than you would expect from a simple worker’s household – some of it is very fine and tasteful, and it seems to have been expensive. Certainly the fine tankards, and the possible Wedgwood cup were, but also things like the glass stopper, the porcelain, and the pearl ware – not what I would expect from a humble mill worker’s house. I would suggest that after building it, Elizabeth Hampson lived here, or if not her, then someone like her – someone fairly well-to-do with taste. A little more research might reveal much more.

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And finally, of course, what’s a blog post without a brace or two of benchmarks? There were several marked on the map:

Number 1 was easy to spot, although I suspect that the wall has been rebuilt, so it might not be in exactly the correct spot. Nonetheless, excellent work by whoever rebuilt the wall to include the benchmark – very conscientious! Here it is in all its glory.

Number 2 was also an easy spot, on the wall leading down.

Number 3 should have been on the south east corner of the row of houses – I looked and couldn’t see anything (I didn’t look closely – nobody wants to be ‘that man who peered over our gate’, that’s how rumours start). According to this bench mark spotter’s website, the mark is definitely still there, but alas, I have no photo to show you.

Number 4, however, was there, on the stone base to the bridge across Bray Clough Brook.

Bray Clough Brook joins Long Clough Brook a little farther upstream, and in turn it joins Glossop Brook at the bottom of Primrose Lane – I blogged about the confluence here.

Right then, I think that’s about it (I can hear you, you know, breathing a sigh of relief). I will try and be a bit more frequent in my posting… and try to tackle smaller subjects! When I started to write this, I really had no idea how large a post it would become! But there you go. Please, any comments and ideas are always welcome. More soon, I promise.

But until then, I remain.

Your humble servant,

RH