No, this is not going to be a long essay on the much overlooked site, so don’t worry. In fact, you might say quite the opposite when I present a wonderful piece of archaeology… you’ll see.
Plan taken from RS Conway’s ‘Melandra’ shows the layout of the fort, as well as the find spots of interesting bits and pieces. Most of these are now in Buxton Museum, which is well worth a look.
I was there a few months ago with the family Hamnett, and following Mike Brown and Roger Hargreave’s talk at the Glossop and Longdendale Archaeology Society. Both have been heavily involved in trying to get some sort of archaeological project resurrected for the site, as there is still so much not known, and both are great ambassadors for the fort. Sadly, there is nothing major in the pipeline, but their talk prodded me to go and look again at the overgrown site, windswept and slightly out of place against the backdrop of a 1960’s council estate. Face the other way, though, and it is the wilds of Longdendale that confront you. What a difference between this landscape and that in which the soldiers who built it grew up: The First Cohort of Frisiavones, originally from Belgium/Netherlands area, and assisted by men from the 3rd Cohort of Bracara Augustani, who were originally from Portugal.
Longdendale Valley, brooding. From Melandra.
It an amazing site, but one that is very neglected, and what could be a huge source of pride for the people of not just Longdendale, but of Derbyshire too, is all too easily passed by, overgrown and forlorn. So go and visit it, people. Read Mike Brown’s excellent booklet on it (couldn’t find a link, but it crops up all over). R.S. Conway’s 1906 academic book is out of print, but you can still get it relatively cheaply.
The young Master Hamnett at the north gate. Behind him, to the left, is St Michael’s, Mottram, and to the right, the ‘Deep Cutting’ at Roe Cross (and the White Stone).
Before we go on, though, a digression about the name Melandra.
According to the Ravenna Cosmography (a 7th Century list of Roman towns and forts), its actual name, was Ardotalia, not Melandra (see no.108 in the above link).
It is likely that Melandra is a name made up by the Reverend John Watson, the Rector of St Mary’s in Stockport, who first described the site following a visit in 1772. Seemingly, he wanted to give it a ‘classical’ air. Indeed, there is no record of the name Melandra existing prior to Watson’s and at that time of his ‘discovery’, as Watson himself notes, the area of the fort was known as the ‘Castle-Yard‘, and the eleven fields adjoining it are named ‘Castle Carrs‘ in various land deeds (1). Where, then, did Melandra originate? According to Anderson “The word Melandra has a curiously Greek appearance” (2), and is alleged to be a “Roman name derived from the Greek Melaxdryon, which signifies ‘the heart of oak‘ or ‘the heart in the oak“, perhaps a reference to the trees of Longdendale” (3). However, it is very unlikely that the Roman name remained unchanged for 1600 years. And, it is equally unlikely that the local population of late 18th century Glossopdale and Longdendale spoke classical Greek. No, they would simply have called it Castle Hill or similar, which is exactly what they did! However, an Oxford educated academic and clergyman would almost certainly have spoken several classical languages, and be at least proficient enough to invent a name. So thank you Reverend Watson, because of you, the name Melandra Castle has become common usage, and so we continue to call it thus.
Right, the find!
The fort is a scheduled ancient monument, so it is illegal to take anything out of the ground here. Even stuff off the molehills, which is where I found this:
Ring pull from a 1980’s drinks can. No idea what type, but I’m sure someone, somewhere, will know!
Don’t worry, I’m not about to feel the long arm of the law, it is quite literally rubbish, and of a 1970’s-80’s vintage. Anyone who watched the TV show Detectorists will immediately chuckle (very highly recommended, by the way, even if I don’t always see eye to eye with metal detectorists and their hobby).
According to this website, ring pulls like this stopped being used in the UK in around 1989/1990. So there you go. I was so taken aback by nostalgia, that I immediately thought “I need to blog this!” Also, I surely can’t be the only one who used to detach the seal bit, insert the larger end into the slot on the ring, and using the natural sprung tension, ‘ping’ it off in a frisbee fashion. You could get some distance on these things. Am I the only one?
Anyway, a bit of fun. I have a few more serious posts to finish off, so expect those relatively soon (after the weekend?)
And as always, I remain,
Your humble servant,
RH
Watson, J. 1775. “An Account of an Undescribed Roman Station in Derbyshire” Archaeologia 3: 236-238
Anderson, W.B. 1906 “The Roman Place-Names of Derbyshire” in Conway, S (ed.) 1906 “Melandra”.
It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t published any pottery or other bits and pieces for a while. Of course, whilst I may not have written anything, it doesn’t mean that I have stopped picking things up… nope, I have literal bags of the stuff, much to Mrs Hamnett’s annoyance.
So here goes with some interesting bits and pieces from all over Glossop.
These first sherds of pottery are from the back garden of the Prince of Wales pub, Milltown, Glossop. I have already blogged about the clay pipes from here in this post, but this is the pottery that goes with them.
Treasure from the Prince of Wales pub. I’m happy to return them, if they want them.
The same age, unsurprisingly, Mid to late Victorian, possibly early 20th Century. The stoneware (top right) is fairly bog standard, and probably comes from a ginger beer bottle or similar (which makes sense, given where we are). The blue on white pottery is difficult to date from small fragments, but it starts in the 1790’s, and carries on until… well, now! This wouldn’t be early stuff, and it’s been kicking around for a while in the soil, so Mid – Late Victorian it is. The top left is from a featheredge decorated dinner plate, measuring 24cm in circumference. Here is a good example of the type with some discussion. This style of pottery also starts 1790ish, but the type we see here is the same date as the others. It is commonly found with a ‘shell edge’, but this one has the impressions on the surface, but not the undulations. All very common, and very in keeping with the place being a pub in the busy Milltown area. I want to know what was being served on the plate – good hearty pub food of meat and veg, one assumes.
This next sherd is from Whitfield Recreation Ground. I found it a few years ago, after some heavy rain, just underneath the bench by the swings.
Unexpected find from Whitfield Rec.
Cream coloured stone ware, hard fired, and virtually indestructible, as I have mentioned elsewhere. This sherd is glazed inside and out, and comes from the bit that the joins the base to the side. This type of pottery was only normally used for ginger beer or milk in the late 19th and very early 20th Centuries, so we may assume that as the date. It’s a possible rare survival from a time before the recreation Ground was there (it opened in January 1903). I intend to do a future blog post about the ground, as it has a fascinating history.
This next lot is from Old Lane in Simmondley. This was the original road between Charlesworth and Glossop, and joined in the meeting of several roads at St James’s church, Whitfield (I have blogged about that meeting place before). I did a bit of a walk along the path as far as it goes (here, on my Twitter feed – and the next few photographs on from it), and it eventually fizzles out into fields. But along the way I picked up a few sherds.
Simmondly, Old Lane – the original road.
Top right is three sherds of cream ware, without decoration, and eminently undatable – probably Victorian, but ultimately these are destined for the midden in my garden. Top middle is a piece of thick slip glazed earthenware. This, I think, is 18th Century, so relatively early, and certainly earlier than the other sherds. It is glazed on the interior surface only, with the outer surface being washed with a red slip, so I think it is probably a cooking pot of some sort. Top left is a large stoneware storage jar of some form, or possibly a flagon like this. It is salt glazed on the inside, measures 14cm in diameter, has a chamfered edge around the base, and is almost certainly mid to late Victorian. Bottom right is a fine china open vessel – a saucer possibly – it is undecorated, and not enough remains to get a diameter. Bottom left is a broken fragment of a stoneware storage jar. It is salt glazed, and has an impressed decoration of a border of round blobs, which is a very common motif for this type of pottery.
Now, the good stuff!
There is a place, if you know where to look, in Manor Park, that produces all sorts of goodies. I think it is a late Victorian – Edwardian rubbish dump, or at least was one before being redeposited. Over the last few years, I have pulled some very interesting bits and pieces out of the soil, and I suspect there is plenty more, too.
First up, these two.
Unbroken glass bottles – something of a rarity.
The one on the right probably contained a hair oil or something (I don’t known why I know that, or even if it’s true, but I seem to recall reading it somewhere). Not that impressive, other than the fact that it still has the original label on it… except I can’t read the bloody thing! Frustrating.
The blue one on the left is lovely, though. Not a mark on it, and when I cleaned it off, I realised two things – firstly, there was a thick liquid inside it, and secondly, the seal was still good. I cleaned it really well, and gently opened up the bottle, and despite Mrs Hamnett daring me to taste it, I instead smelled it – faintly floral and clean. I think it’s rose scented oil for ladies to wear. A wonderful find.
The next two are really quite nice, too.
A taste of childhood – I love the personal side to archaeology.
On the left, a fragment of a child’s cup, presumably with a nursery rhyme round it. I have looked up the phrases “a terrible grin” and “blew them both”, but nothing pops up the internet. If anyone has an idea, please let me know, as I’d love to find out. The fat figure also seems to have a tail – a dog or wolf? I was thinking the Three Pigs as a possibility, with the wolf blowing down the houses, but I don’t remember him blowing two houses down…
On the right, one of my favourite finds. A hollow-cast toy soldier, a child’s prized possession, perhaps. A member of the Grenadier Guards, he has his rifle shouldered, and is marching, albeit with no feet, but at least he has the dignity of having paint. I love toy soldiers, and my own childhood was filled with Airfix plastic ones (I still have them… they await Master Hamnett’s sticky claws!). They were cheaply produced in their thousands, and are not uncommon in rubbish dumps, but I absolutely adore this figure. I have looked online, and although there are thousands like him, I can’t quite place him.
Amazing stuff, and if you buy me a drink, I’ll tell you where to look!
And to end with, a little foreign fun. During my France trip this summer, I found this crumbling out of a soil bank in a vineyard, on the road to the walled city of Carcassonne.
A surprise find, although not unexpected given where we were!
It’s the dimple from the bottom of a wine bottle – technically called a ‘punt’. This one is blown glass, which ages it – you can make out the tiny air bubbles when you hold it up to the light. I’m no expert, but I would say it is certainly 19th Century – and apparently the deeper the punt, the earlier the bottle – so perhaps earlier? Anyway, given where we were, I couldn’t very well leave it there, could I?
Hope you have enjoyed the pottery, and as always comments and questions are most welcome.
After my last post on milestones, I received a message from the always interesting Roger Hargreaves (see comments below the above article). Now, Roger is something of an expert in these matters, and has done some considerable research into the road system of the area through the ages – Roman to 19th Century in fact – and he helpfully offered some information, and some photographs, too.
So then, the milestones…
Following an act of parliament in 1770, the milestones were erected every mile (hence the name) along the 1730’s turnpike from Manchester to Saltersbrook by the surveyor James Brown jr. Later sections of turnpike were built from Saltersbrook to t’other side o’ Pennines – there’s a great website, with lots of pictures, dealing with that section, here. This road from Roe Cross follows broadly the route of what is now A628 / Woodhead Pass, itself a turnpike from the early 19th Century, and which overlays the original road.
However, in places, this 1730 turnpike is still visible where the 19th Century road deviates, perhaps taking an easier route, and so sections can be walked, and it is along these that milestones, where they survive, can be seen.
Here is a section of the original 1730’s turnpike. It leaves the Woodhead pass at the first circle, and rejoins past Crowden, at the second circle.The 1730’s turnpike as seen on Google Streetview. The road originally went up to the left – you can see the path, and can walk along it for a large portion.
Now, because milestones are placed exactly one mile from each other, it is possible to work out where they should be. Of course, in some places where we would expect to find them, however, the newer road has obliterated all traces of the older road, and presumably the milestones would have been broken up and used as hardcore, although not necessarily, and it might be worth a further investigation – they are perfect for gateposts, after all.
So, starting from Roe Cross, then
10 Miles from Manchester – this would have stood at the Toll House at Roe Cross
11 Miles (somewhere on Mottram Moor) and 12 Miles (far side of Hollingworth) are missing – the area has been built up, although they may well still be in a hedgeback somewhere.
13 Miles to Manchester – this would have originally stood somewhere in Tintwistle – annoyingly, the mileage doesn’t work with it being situated at the toll gate there, which stood at the far end of the village, west of Townhead Farm.
14 miles is missing, but would presumably have stood east of Townhead Farm – again, worth a look in hedgebacks and walls.
15 Miles to Manchester. Just by Rhodeswood Reservoir. Photograph by Roger Hargreaves. And a damn fine one it is too!
16 Miles would be just below Highstones, where the track still exists, and so would be a strong contender for a survival in the walls and hedgebacks.
17 Miles and 18 Miles are in places where the 19th Century road overlies the 18th Century, and thus are likely to be lost. Although, again, maybe worth a look.
19 Miles to Manchester – mutilated and forlorn in a wall at Higher Wooodhead. Photograph by Roger Hargreaves. I love this photograph.
20 and 21 Miles to Manchester are beyond this, and although there is a survival of the road in these areas, there are no walls in which the stones may be hiding. It is likely that they are simply buried in the peat in that area, waiting to be discovered. A walking trip with a steel pole, anyone?
This takes us to Saltersbrook, and the other side of the turnpike system there. Here is a map of the road from Saltersford into Yorkshire.
The Yorkshire side of the turnpike road, from Saltersford to Wortley. There are plenty of milestones and other interesting goodies along this route, but they are truly beyond the scope of this blog. Check them out in this really amazing website.
So after the journey, let’s end on a song – a particular favourite of mine, from a particularly good album, and whose title is very apt.
I also want to thank Roger Hargreaves for allowing me to use his photographs, and for the additional information.
As always, comments or questions are always welcome.
So, I received a pair of emails recently, and both of them answered an outstanding question that has been bugging me for some time.
Answers people, we actually have answers! I asked, you listened, and by Great Zeus (or Arnomecta, perhaps) you answered.
So, drum roll please…
THE STONE IN ST JAMES’S CHURCHYARD, WHITFIELD.
I mused here on the possibility that a large, out of place, stone in the churchyard St James’s, Whitfield, might be part of the base of the Hollin Cross that almost certainly stood at the junction there, on Hollincross Lane.
Here is the stone in St James’s – not a cross base!
I was wrong. And how!
I got an email from Louise Seville which states:
“My father-in-law Neal Seville had some connection with the church (Sunday school??), I think in the 1970s. He was giving a talk based on the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. He and his friend Bert Taylor from Chunal, brought the stone from Bert’s own small quarry at the back of his house on Chunal. The stone was moved on a truck – Bert had a haulage company. The stone was used in church to illustrate the story and was abandoned in the churchyard afterwards as it proved to be too difficult to move. Neal said that in the future people would wonder how the stone got there and come to all sorts of conclusions! “
And how right he was!
So there we have it folks. I genuinely think that it was bonkers to use a stone that size to illustrate the parable, no matter how factually correct! But apparently that was about right for Neal, who got up to all sorts of capers. Here is the parable, for those of you that slept through Sunday School.
So my thanks to Louise and Eddie Seville for solving the mystery. And, of course, thanks to the late Neal Seville for providing one in the first place.
Now, the next one has bugged me for years, so I am truly grateful for its solution.
THE ODDLY SHAPED CERAMIC OBJECTS
I asked for ideas about these bits of pottery that Sandra T. and I had found. They were so oddly shaped, and so similar in production, that they must have had a single, very specialised, purpose. But what purpose, that was the question.
The puzzling pieces of pottery
Well, bam! An email from the wonderful Eddie Picton arrived in my inbox the other day.
May I suggest that they are “creel peg pivots” as used in textile machinery. A roving bobbin had sliver wound on it, this was then put upon a creel peg and then put in following machine creel. The lower end then would be free to rotate on the ceramic with minimal friction. I worked in the last spinning mill in Oldham, the last of this type of creel was scrapped in the early 1990s, the mill finally closing 2002.
The connection between the object and the place – both connected with weaving and spinning – made this very likely, and it is not an interpretation I had thought of before. I did a bit of research, and began to understand how they would have worked. Yes, it seemed to fit.
Last night, Eddie was at the Glossop and Longdendale Archaeological Society talk on ‘Melandra – Past and Future’ given by Mike Brown and Roger Hargreaves (and very good it was too). He gave me this drawing of how the creel peg pivot would have worked and where it sat in the machine.
Great drawing Eddie, thanks.
Our pottery pieces are those marked ‘Pot’ in the picture, with the bobbin/creel peg sitting in the hollow, glazed, part of the mystery object. They are tapered slightly so that they can fit into the holes in the frame.
These are those, in situ, in Styal Mill. The photo is Eddie’s.
So that’s that solved! Thanks for that, Eddie, you’re a star. And it seems I owe you a drink… I’m as good as my word. See you on the first Tuesday of November.
I have another blog almost ready to go, so fingers crossed you’ll get a bumper crop of posts by the weekend.
As always, comments and questions are very welcome.
Evening all. The third blog post of June… see, I am trying.
Anyway, this one should (hopefully) provoke a bit of a response. I say hopefully because, dear and precious readers… I need a favour.
Some back story.
I received an email from the wonderful Sandra T. some months ago, asking whether I knew anything about this piece of pottery that she had found in Manor Park. She, like most of the people who read this blog, pick up random things they find interesting, which is to be commended (although, apparently, she keeps them in a clock… but let’s not judge).
The mystery object – AA battery for scale. Copyright Sandra T.
Now, I had no idea what it was, but it rang a bell. a brief search through my ‘interesting things’ box, and lo!
Two more of these mystery objects.
So now we have three of these mystery objects. I found mine in an old dump near Broadbottom, which at the latest was 1910’s, but was generally earlier – say 1890’s – which at least gives us a time period to look at.
Interesting. I thought I’d do this post eventually, as someone out there might know what , when, and why.
Last month my new neighbour (hello Simon A.) partly demolished and rebuilt a wall on our property line, and in the process discovered that the whole wall sits on a bed of pottery and other domestic waste. This mountain of material will be the subject of a future post, especially as it makes a fairly coherent deposit, thus can tell us interesting things. The wall can only have been built post 1850-ish, and definitely before 1860, which gives us a clear date, too. Amongst the bits and pieces was this:
Another one… what are they?
So now we have four of them.
They are roughly conical, tapering to the base, measure between 10 and 12mm high, 13-14mm across the top, and roughly 11mm across the bottom. The bottom is flat, the top is hollow in a perfect hemisphere (I say top and bottom, but actually they might work either way up). Some are glazed all over, but one is only glazed on the interior of the hollow. This last point is important, and may hold the key to understanding what they are; it matters that only this bit is glazed, i.e. waterproof, not the rest of the object. Why? Also, they are clearly mass produced, and have a very specific role… but what?
I have two suggestions, both of which may work, but equally they are guesswork!
1) Kiln furniture. When you fire pots in a mass group, as they were being in the Victorian period, you need to keep the plates, etc. separate in the kiln, or the heat won’t circulate properly and you end up with poorly fired plates. These spacers were made in their millions, and were about the same size and shape. Though what they would be doing here in Glossop – not known for it pottery kilns – is anyone’s guess.
2) A way of selling medicine. The little hollow bit is glazed, but the exterior isn’t, so perhaps the medicine was stored in that bit, and scraped out when needed? Or it held a single pill that could be crushed in the hollow?
So over to you. Please, please comment and let me know what you think. The question is very simple. What on earth are they?
I’ll buy a drink for anyone who can tell me, with proof, what they are.
I went for a pint with my father in law a few weeks ago (hello Mr B!) in what has become a bit of a Wednesday evening post-work ritual for us. We popped to the Prince of Wales in Milltown which, I am reliably informed, was built in 1852. And an excellent pub it is too – good beer, and a great beer garden. It has a real sense of history about it, especially as the area is now being developed so heavily, and I would imagine that it would have been a bustling pub, rowdy and rough, in the 1800’s.
I love the corner door, now bricked up – probably the entrance to the tap room – and the carved ‘Fleur de Lis’ (traditionally the symbol of the Prince of Wales) above the door is a nice feature. Also, note the Victorian street sign for Mill Street to the left of the Marston’s sign. Fascinating.
Sitting drinking my beer and chatting, I had a look around to see if I could see anything of interest, and lo! In the flower bed amongst some more modern glass and pottery, were these beauties:
Clay pipes – the cigarette butt of the Victorian Period.
I love clay pipes, I really do. There is something so tactile about them, and so personal too. I joke about them being the cigarette butt of the Victorian period, and they are in a sense – smoke them and then throw them away – but they embody so much more. Believe it or not, they are the subject of many very detailed archaeological studies; they are mass produced, but they show features that shift over time, allowing a fairly precise date to be given to the pipe, and possibly then to the site/building/feature. Google “clay pipe chronologies” for examples. I’m not going to go into too much detail, as I really am no expert, but these two examples are very obviously Victorian. The bit on the right is part of the stem, and comes from near the mouth-piece, as the stem get thicker nearer the bowl. The piece on the left has the stem, spur (that little bit the points downwards), and the lower part of the bowl, where the tobacco itself sits, and which in this case shows signs of burning. Neither are particularly interesting, and they are certainly not rare, but nevertheless are integral to the human story of Glossop, and one wonders what conversations were happening in the pub whilst they were being smoked?
The history of The Prince of Wales, and all other pubs of Glossop, past and present, are detailed in the excellent book ‘History in a Pint Pot’ by David Field. Meticulously researched and fascinating, it is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the history of Glossop, pubs, or beer – so that’s all boxes ticked for me. It is now out of print, sadly, but Glossop library has a copy. You could also check out the superb Glossop Victorian Architectural Heritage website, they have lots of information about pubs, and much more besides. Well worth a look.
Moing on, this next pipe is a bit more interesting.
I found it a while back on the edge of my favourite path – Bank Street, or the ‘Bonk‘ as it’s known locally. However, not being born in Glossop, I would feel a fraud calling it the ‘Bonk‘, so Bank Street it is.
I love dialect words and phrases – the way that the beauty of the English language is tied firmly and absolutely to the place it is spoken is truly remarkable. American friends of mine marvel at how many accents there are in such a small island. And yet if we go back 100 or so years to a period before mass media, it would have been possible to tell not only which town you came from, but which part of the town, and indeed which street you lived on. Now that we are bombarded with accents and the media is dominated with southern ‘Estuarine‘ English, we are slowly becoming linguistically homogeneous and eventually we may lose our accents altogether, which I think would be a shame. What is interesting about ‘Bonk‘ as a word is that it not only partly reflects the Glossop accent, but it is also almost certainly derived from the medieval French ‘Banque‘ meaning a steep wooded valley next to a stream. It crops up in Cheshire dialect as ‘Bongs’, and the nearest examples I can think of is Leebangs Rocks in Broadbottom (Leebangs = Le Banques), and The Bongs both in Handforth, and in Goostrey. It’s not often you encounter Norman French in Glossop!
But I digress! It was found not too far from the bottle top I blogged about here. I thought it nothing particularly special until I got home and cleaned it. Wow!
Side 1 – ‘W’ CartoucheSide 2 – ‘T’ Cartouche
It’s the front part of a clay pipe, just at the point where the stem meets the bowl – you can see it thickening into the bowl. But on either side, imprinted into it, is a cartouche containing the letter ‘T’ and letter ‘W’. Presumably these are maker’s marks, but unfortunately, I cannot find any information out about who or what ‘W’ and ‘T’ were. Also there is the suspicion that they may actually not be maker’s marks as such, but were instead used by many different companies as a way of suggesting quality – it was perceived by the buying public that those letters were associated with a superior pipe (I read this somewhere, and now can’t find the reference… grrrrrrr). This would be similar to the Victorian belief that pipes from Ireland were the best, and thus many clay pipes have the words ‘Dublin’ or ‘Ireland’, or have a harp or shamrock imprinted on them somewhere… despite being made in Birmingham or similar. It is Victorian in date, and scrubbed up quite nicely!
I was originally going to blog about this in a larger post about the trip down Bank Street (which I will still write… honest!), but it seemed to fit in here better.
By the way, if the landlord of the Prince of Wales reads this and wants the pipes back, I’ll bring them round next Wednesday!
EDITI found the reference to ‘TW’ – it was in the Clay Tobacco Pipes report by Dennis Gallagher, and from the High Morlaggan Project (the report is under excavation / reports / clay pipes). In it, it states that ‘TW’ pipes “were an extremely popular type and were produced by most makers. The meaning of the letters is unknown, although it may originally been used by the early 19th century Edinburgh maker, Thomas White, who was renowned for his high quality pipes“.
A glorious weekend – I got all my vegetables planted, the garden was tidied, the lawn was mown… and wine was drunk in the sunset. A very succesful weekend indeed.
I was going to blog about some bits and pieces I had found recently, but two wonderful things happened over the last few days. The first of which will have to wait… it will take a bit of unpicking (and cleaning and researching). It is very exciting. And lots of it.
But for now, I present the second wonderful thing, a gift from my raised bed of onions and garlic!
You can see the marks where it has been shaped, though I don’t know how they were made.
Ok, so I know it doesn’t look like much (so many of my blog posts start like that), but it’s the bottom end of a Victorian (or very early Edwardian) child’s slate pencil. Paper was a very expensive commodity in the Victorian period, and you certainly wouldn’t have given it to children to learn to write on. Instead, they practised their copperplate handwriting on slate writing tablets with slate pencils such as this.
Years ago, I found an old wooden pencil case in a junk store, and in it were two complete and several broken slate pencils – it’s nice to see a complete original one.
A complete version of a slate pencil – again, you can see the grinding marks where it was shaped.
Last year, I was poking around a Victorian rubbish tip with a friend (as you do…), and I came across this broken example of a writing slate.
Broken writing slate. You can see the lines used to guide the child learning copperplate script.
The thing is wonderful. You can clearly see the engraved lines – thin, thick, thin, for the upper, middle, and lower part of each letter – to keep the child’s letter forms perfect and copperplate. But look at the edges too – they are shaped – it may be mass produced, but some care has gone into how it looks.
I turned it over, and found this on the reverse
More engraved lines.
Wonderful – squared paper for maths problems, and probably for art too. I love this object, and it is among my favourite things that I have found. Sadly, it wasn’t in the Glossop area, but in deepest, darkest, Lancashire, but I thought I’d share it anyway to illustrate my pencil… so to speak.
Here’s what it would have looked like when it was being used.
Victorian writing slate, lifted from this website.
The question is, then, how did the slate pencil fragment end up in my garden?
We archaeologists are obsessed with object biographies:
“Not only do objects change through their existence, but they often have the capability of accumulating histories, so that the present significance of an object derives from the persons and events to which it is connected.”
(Gosden C. and Y. Marshall. 1999. ‘The Cultural Biography of Objects’ p.170)
And this object has a fascinating biography. It starts with a pencil being dropped by a child and broken. It is then thrown away into the toilet with all the other rubbish, and taken away by the night soil man. Via the process of night soiling, it ended up spread onto a field. But not my field, yet. This is the interesting bit – the raised bed in which I found it was filled with soil that we bought from Lymefield Garden Centre in Broadbottom (highly recommended, by the way). The source for this soil is, I think, just behind the garden centre, but the original location for the pencil (i.e. the school) was probably Manchester, or perhaps Ashton Under Lyne (although, I suppose there is no reason to assume that it couldn’t have come from a school in Broadbottom).
The fact that the pencil may have started out being used in Manchester, and ended up in my onion patch in Glossop, via in a field in Broadbottom, is a cautionary tale for archaeological intepretation – we could have simply assumed that my house was once used as a school.
Anyway, slate pencils are not uncommon finds in fields and gardens – night soiling means they get around, and they stick around as, like pottery, they are virtually indestructible – Here, for example, is one on a blog run by a gardener who records the things she finds in the soil. And a brief glance around the internet produces a number of similar results. Still, it’s a nice little find, and a wonderful piece of social history.
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.
Gifts from the moles!
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!
I thought I’d venture a little farther afield this week. The blog is intended to explore Glossop’s heritage, but I feel that if I can see it from Glossop, I should be allowed to blog about it… even if it is in another county.
But don’t worry, we won’t be going to Yorkshire!
St Michael and All Angels church in Mottram dominates this end of Longdendale – it is visible from all sorts of angles, disappearing as you travel various roads and paths, only to pop up unexpectedly from behind buildings or between trees. Indeed, it’s presence keeps watch over the valley, almost as a reminder that the church watches over the people. In fact, I can see it from James’ window, on the distant brow.
St Michael and All Angels, Mottram. Photograph by Stephen Burton.
It sits on a prominence called War Hill (from the Middle English Quarrelle, meaning quarry), and is a particularly bleak place, catching all the wind that roars down Longdendale from the moors. The church itself, though severely ‘improved’ during the Victorian period (read, monkeyed around with and partly rebuilt) is still at its heart essentially late medieval in date – mid 15th Century or so. Going further back, it may well have been the site of Saxon church prior to that. Travelling even further, there is evidence in the form of cropmarks that it might have been the site of a Roman signal station connected to Melandra – a perfect place with commanding views up and down Longdendale. Prior even to that, particularly given its prominent location in the landscape, it must surely have been attractive in prehistory, though there is no evidence at present.
As an interesting aside, during the late 17th Century a whole pile of my ancestors, the Williamsons, were ‘hatched, matched, and dispatched’ here (that is, they were baptised, married and buried). The Williamson family married into the Sidebottom family who were fairly big in this area, were important in the early Industrial period, and were consequently quite wealthy. Alas, my line gradually becomes poorer, and we end up in East Manchester working in a mill, rather than owning it.
Signature of John Williamson, my great, great. great, great, great, great, great grandfather, born in 1678 in Mottram, and who married Elizabeth Sidebottom on 15th February 1703 in Mottram Church… exactly 315 years to the day, today, coincidentally, and rather spookily. I will raise a glass to them whilst looking at the church as soon as I have published this post!
Perusing the old OS maps of the area, as I am wont to do (here), I noticed three wells in the immediate vicinity. Now, nothing unusual there, the whole area is teeming with them as we live in an area with a high number of springs. However, what was unusual is that all three, very close together, were named. Normally, a well is simply marked ‘well‘ on an OS map, but the fact that these have names could indicate that there may be more to them. And what names they are – Daniel Well, Grave Well, and Boulder Well – names that conjured up wonderful images. Well, well, well, I thought, this must be worth an investigation.
The three wells, Daniel, Grave, and Boulder, are outlined in Red. Mottram church is outlined in green in order to get your bearings. This is from the 1886 1:2500 OS map. Note also the Coal Shaft and Mottram Colliery marked – the area has a very low quality coal seam running through it that was sporadically mined in the 18th and 19th centuries.
And so it was.
Daniel Well is situated on the left, northern, side of a track that comes from War Hill along the side of the school, and downhill to a pond. Interestingly, the only artefactual evidence from this exploration came from this first part of the track, just behind the school playground.
1/3 pint of Co-Op school milk in a squat bottle. This really is a nostalgic trip!
I am just about old enough to remember free school milk, and these are the bottles they came in… It has been over 30 years since I touched one of these last, and the feeling was one of immediate nostalgia and a weird sense of happiness. Silver foil top and a blue plastic straw… I was back in Bradshaw Hall Infants School, just like it was yesterday! What I love about this artefact is that the only way it could have ended up on the track behind the playground is if some naughty child threw it over the fence… if you put it to your ear, I swear I can hear the “vip, vip, vip” sound of Parka coats rubbing together and the cries of “go on, I dare you… chuck it!”.
On to Daniel Well, then. The sunken path is muddy, but well constructed and was clearly used – I wondered if this was the main well for the area. My first sight of it seems to confirm that thought.
Daniel Well, overgrown and unloved. Beyond is the playing field of Mottram School, and beyond that, Longdendale.
The path widens out at this point, and the stone built well head structure stands well built still. The path is very boggy, and although the well is overgrown and possibly relatively dry in terms of water within it, the spring that created the well is still flowing freely downhill.
Close up of Daniel Well. Stone built arch, and side platforms upon which to put your buckets, bottles, etc.
The stone-built arch that is the front of the well goes back some three feet, although it is sadly now full of collapsed rubble. To me, this seems a sad end to what was one of the most vital aspects of the village – lives were, quite literally, saved with this water. Food, drink, laundry, baths, all came from this point. People who met drawing water here married in the church above, and had children. Gossip and community, focused on this place, and yet, no longer. I would love to see it restored, or just a little better cared for.
Following the path down, the water flows into this secluded and sheltered pond.
The pond from the end of the track. The water flowing into it from behind the camera comes from Daniel Well. It then flow out again through a channel to the left.
Clearly Daniel Well was an important well in the area – the path and the stone built well head attest to this. I have no idea about the name, though – possibly from a personal name of the person who owned the land? Something Biblical, maybe? Any thoughts, anyone? The 1954 1:10,00 sees the last mention of Daniel Well on an OS map, and clearly by that point it had ceased to be important as a water source. Sadly, I doubt anyone living nearby would know it was there now, or at least know that it had a name.
Making my way back up, I decided to look for the other two wells. I had studied Google maps before exploring, and took a while to work out the locations by superimposing the old map field boundaries onto the modern satellite image of the area.
4 is Daniel Well, 3 is Grave Well, and 2 is Boulder Well. 1 becomes important in the discussion below. The black lines are the field boundaries shown in the 1886 map that are no longer there to help with orientation.
Alas, there is nothing left of Grave Well except a muddy patch in the field.
The muddy area in the middle ground, in the slight dip, corresponds to the location of Grave Well. The ground was boggy and is clearly a spring of some sort. The view is looking south.
I am not sure what would have stood here originally – perhaps a structure like that at Daniel Well, but I feel this is unlikely: it is in the middle of the field, and with only a minor footpath to get to the well. No, I think it more likely that it was a simple affair that held some water where it bubbled from the spring underneath. I love the name, though – obviously derived from its proximity to the burial ground of the church, out of view to the right in the photograph. Either that, or it may recall the discovery of a burial in the immediate area. Either way, it does raise interesting questions about water tables and burials, though, and I’m not sure I would like to drink from Grave Well! Its last mention before it disappears into the veil of history is on the 1882 1:10,000 OS map. It clearly lost its importance, and was gradually forgotten about.
Pushing further on I looked for the Boulder Well and, when I found it, was similarly a little disappointed… at least at first, anyway. It was another muddy patch.
The muddy patch in the left foreground corresponds to the location of Boulder Well on the map. The view from here, looking east, is incredible – Longdendale Valley at the left, Glossopdale at the right, and the hump of Mouselow just right of centre. Melandra is somewhere dead centre of the photograph. Despite it being dark, I am quite proud of this photograph.
As with Grave Well, I am not sure what would have stood here originally – probably nothing much. Also, in common with Grave Well, the last mention of it on the OS map is the 1882 1:10,000 map, after which it disappears, and is gone forever. The name intrigued me, though: Boulder Well is a very specific name, deriving from… well, one assumes… a boulder. The lack of boulder is, then, confusing, and a little disappointing.
I pushed on regardless, to see what I could see. And lo! In the next field north, at the edge, there stood a bloody big boulder!
The boulder! Looking north. It is marked as point ‘1’ on the satellite map above.Close up of the boulder. It is a glacial erratic of some sort, rounded and left behind by the retreating ice.
Now, although it is in a different field, this must be the origin of the name Boulder Well. Indeed, it appears to have been moved ‘recently’ – it is sitting on top of the grass, rather than embedded in it. However, if it had been moved, this at least would explain why it is in a different field from the ‘well’, and why it now stands comfortably out of the way at the field boundary. I wonder when it was moved, and where it stood originally.
The boulder, with the Longdendale Valley behind it.
The fate of these wells is interesting, and is obviously tied to the introduction of clean piped drinking water directly into your home. We – and I am very guilty of this – have a tendency to romanticise the past, and a wish to remove the trappings of modern day living, to peel back all the ‘progress’ we have made, and to revert to a simpler way of life. I love the idea of having to walk to a well to draw pure cold water, it would be so… earthy, grounding, basic. Free and simple.
But then I have never done it in the rain, sleet, or snow, wearing ill fitting wooden clogs, wrapped in a basic cloth shirt, slipping down a muddy unmetalled path, after having worked 15 hours in a mill.
I may yearn for a less commercial, more simple life… but I don’t yearn for pneumonia.
Hope you enjoyed the jaunt around Mottram. I have a few more posts I’d like to do about various wells – they intrigue me – so watch this space.
There is still lots to do, and lots more to find – but I saw this the other day, up on Cliffe Road, on the exterior wall of a garden.
T & J captured forever! I like to imagine a married couple (Tommy and Jane?) still together but now in their nineties, and who still feel a pang of guilt every time they walk past this wall.
Who ‘T & J’ were, we may never know, but the stone has been re-used from elsewhere to build the wall – which means someone saw the graffiti and thought to keep it right side up and readable, which I think is nice.
Now, more seriously. I mentioned the book, Medieval Church Graffiti, in the last graffiti post (here). It is a really interesting read, and has resonance in the work I do at the Blackden Trust (link here), so I can’t recommend it highly enough. However, the rather incredible folk at Tameside Archaeological Society (website here) have begun their own project at Mottram St Michael and All Angels, looking at the graffiti there… and coming up spades (pun fully intended). Their brief report is here, but let’s hope for more soon. Actually, in a way, I’m annoyed, as as soon as I read the book, I thought “I know, Mottram church, that’ll have some graffiti, and I’ll be able to post it on the blog…”. But I have been beaten to the punch.
However… If anyone fancies spending an afternoon or two in Glossop’s All Saints Church looking for graffiti, give me an email. Although the building as it stands dates largely from 1831 onwards, it replaced the medieval church, and reused some stone in the rebuilding process, particularly in the nave. There may be something left behind… perhaps. Anyway, drop me a line – but at least glance at the book first (here).
The next post (Thursday… probably) will be based around Mottram church, so keep your eyes open. Oh, and more pottery is incoming.
The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities 
