Whitfield Cross – Sort of Update

October 28, 2018November 2, 2018 Tim Campbell-GreenLeave a comment

A brief blog today…

Mrs Hamnett, Master Hamnett, and myself found ourselves passing through Macclesfield a few weeks ago. So I took the opportunity to visit the three splendid Mercian Round Shaft crosses that were erected in West Park there. I had tentatively suggested that one of them was a dead ringer for Whitfield Cross, and in a slightly better state of preservation. Definitely worth a closer look, and, of course, Master Hamnett was pleased as it means he got to go to the park.

The three cross shafts are located in the middle of the play area, and impossible to miss.

macc 1 — The Macclesfield Crosses, situated in the excellent West Park in town centre.

They were originally sited together at Ridge Hall Farm in Sutton (about a mile south of Macclesfield – here). Two of them were being used as gateposts, with iron and lead fixings carved into the stone, and the third was in a pile of rubbish. Their importance recognised, they were promptly moved to West Park, arriving there on 7th January 1858. Interestingly, Ridge Hall Farm was originally a moated farmhouse of medieval date – the remains of the moat can be seen in the aerial photograph above, circling the farm at the south and west.

Now, although the crosses were ‘found’ together, I don’t think that the farm was their original site, and it is likely that they had been moved there from points unknown. The probability of their movement is given evidence by the fact that the farmer had two cross shafts on his land, exactly the right width and in exactly the right location to form a useful gate. And by the fact that one of the crosses was “in a pile of rubbish” – such wording suggests it had been moved and discarded, perhaps awaiting employment as a fence or gate post. Also, whilst they occur in pairs (and the gatepost pair may well be an example of this), we know of no other examples of three crosses occurring together. However, caution should perhaps be urged here; with so few examples of this cross type surviving, we don’t have a huge body of evidence from which to draw comparisons or to make bold statements, and as the old archaeological dictum runs, absence of evidence in not evidence of absence. But in this instance, and on balance, I think it is likely they had been moved. Given that Ridge Hall Farm is not near any parish boundary, nor is close to a church, we might tentatively suggest that they originally marked the junction of tracks, as Whitfield Cross once did.

But I digress.

The one that resembles Whitfield Cross is on the left of the three in the above picture. In the Cheshire and Lancashire volume of Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture (website here) it is listed as Sutton (Ridge Hall Farm) 1, and dates it to 10th or 11th Century. Here is a close up.

macc 2 — The south-west side of the cross.

Although it is made of a similar stone, it is unclear if the cross base is original to the cross. I have to say, it looks like it might be, and if it is the case then we might suggest that this cross was in its original position on the farm. The other two crosses don’t have their bases, and it seems doubtful that the farmer would go to all the trouble of digging up the cross base, when he could just sink a hole and place the shaft that way. Also, if the other two had their bases, then the 19th Century antiquarians who were responsible for their movement would have taken them too.

The collar is of a very similar style to Whitfield – sloppily executed with a rough groove drawn around the neck, rather than two distinct bands.

macc 3 — The Macclesfield cross – note the collar.

Whitfield Cross – detail of the neck band. Similar in style to the Macclesfield Cross above.

I also suggest that the decoration which is missing from Whitfield would be of a similar nature to the Macclesfield example. Here is a closeup of the decoration. You can see what remains of decoration on the Whitfield example above and below.

The decoration is, with the eye of faith, just about visible. Compare with those below.

macc 4 — South west side, described in the Corpus as a “simple scroll, its three offshoots terminating in a triple round scooped leaves”. That looks about right.

macc 5 — North east side, described in the Corpus as “crossing two-strand interlace terminating in a Stafford knot with pointed terminals”.

macc 6 — South-east side – described in the Corpus as simply a “meander pattern”.

macc 7 — North-west side, described in the Corpus as “two-strand encircled twist, with two loose and inward-turning ends at the bottom of the composition”

So there you are. This is what I think a little better preserved Whitfield Cross would have looked like had the puritans and drunken louts of the 18th Century not got hold of it. Having said that, I recently read about people digging up roadside crosses because they believed treasure was buried beneath them, which is another reason these crosses are so rare. Bloody barbarians!

Anyway, I know this is a long way from Glossop, but I think it is important that the comparison with Whitfield Cross is made and explored… who knows, the same craftsman or woman may have carved the crosses. And it’s interesting nonetheless.

Next time, I’ll be a lot more local… very local indeed.

As always, any comments and questions are welcome. There really is quite a thriving community of people out there, and it’s great to hear from you all.

Your humble servant,

Archaeology

Pottery… and more.

October 15, 2018October 28, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green3 Comments

Evening all

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.

PoW — 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.

Wrec — 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.

bot2 — 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.

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.

Your humble servant,

Milestone Update

October 13, 2018October 14, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

Greetings all

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.

Turnpike 1 — 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.

Turnpike 2 — 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.

Milestone at Rhodeswood — 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.

Milestone at Higher Woodhead — 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.

Ding Dong — 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.

Your humble servant.

Archaeology · Stones of Glossop

Some Questions Solved

October 3, 2018October 6, 2018 Tim Campbell-GreenLeave a comment

Greetings all

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.

Hollincross 1 — 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.

Pot Mystery 2 — 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.

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.

Stones of Glossop

Multiple Milestones

September 8, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green6 Comments

Well, three to be precise.

What ho, what ho, what ho! So, I’m back from my summer holiday. Actually, I was only in France for two weeks (with lots of cheese and wine), and the rest of the time I have been busy with life… alas. I have loved the weather here for the last 10 weeks – a decent summer at long last, and the polar opposite of the spring we had. Bizarre.

So, missing out August completely, I’m back with a bang, and hopefully more than one post over the weekend, here we go.

I love milestones. There is something so definite and so grounding about them, and the way in which they locate with reference to other places – you are X miles from Y – you know exactly where you are in the world. They have a long history – the Romans used them all the time, and in reality, they haven’t changed since. This one was found in Buxton, and is inscribed with the following: “TRIB POT COS II P P A NAVIONE M P XI”.

Buxton Roman Milestone, found in 1862 (and shamelessly stolen by me from the wonderful ‘Wonders of the Peak‘ website). Honestly, it is well worth taking the time to look around the site.

Which translates as “With tribunician power, twice consul, father of this country, from Navio, 11 miles”. The Roman fort of Navio is at Brough, near Castleton (information here). This is a great little fortlet, right on the river there, and well worth a trip out to see it. There’s not a great deal to see as such – rather like Melandra, it is lumps on the ground, requiring a bit of imagination – but it produced some fascinating archaeology. My favourite being an altar to the goddess Arnomecta – a local goddess, about whom we know nothing at all. She may be the same as the Goddess Arnemetiae who gave her name to Roman Buxton – Aquae Arnemetiae, but then again possibly not. Something about that both fascinates and frightens me – a lost Goddess.

DERSB-1979-1301-415x800 — Altar dedicated to Arnomecta – stolen again from the wonderful Wonders of the Peak website (use the link in the text above it for more information on the stone).

But I digress… where were we?

Milestones. Mine are nothing like as old, but they are interesting. Honest.

The first is located on the Woodhead Road/B6105 by Allmans Heath Farm and B&B. It is carved into the side of a mounting block, used for getting onto horses, is/was painted white, and it simply states ‘Glossop 1 mile’ with an arrow pointing the direction.

MB1 — The milestone is at the bottom, carved into a niche. The ring on the block would have held your horse in place whilst you climbed aboard.

MB2 — Close up of the milestone: “Glossop 1 Mile”

Now, the mounting block is clearly old. They don’t make them anymore, for one, and the fact that the ring has been set in place using lead would certainly age it to the Victorian period, and potentially earlier. The carving is another matter altogether. I had assumed that the words would have been carved in the Victorian period, but on the way to take the photograph, I got speaking to the owner of the house there who informed me that they were only 10 years or so old – her ex-husband, being a stonemason, carved them. Well, why not? The fact that the mounting block sits next to a very old stone gatepost (on the right in the upper picture) suggests that the owners had moved the stone to the front wall in order to create a feature, which it does.

So, this one might not be of any great age, but the next two certainly are, even if they are slightly out of the area.

I went looking for the fabled White Stone of Roe Cross the other day.

I say fabled as there is very little information about it, and I was hoping to see it to put in my two penn’orth about what it is, why it is, and where it is. It is mentioned in Sharpe’s “Crosses of the Peak District” as potentially marking the junction of the boundaries of Matley, Hollingworth, and Mottram, so I thought it would be worth a look. Alas, I failed utterly to locate it, although I did get as near as White Stone Cottage, so I could’t be too far away. It has almost no presence online, either, besides a letter that was written to protest against the proposed Mottram bypass which mentions it in passing, and references to White Stone Cottage.

If anyone knows the location of the stone, please let me know, as I’d love to see it – and you all know how much I love a good stone.

Now, that same letter, also mentions a carved milestone in that area, and thinking it might be worth a look, young Master Hamnett and I set off down Dewsnap Lane to find it. Which we did in record time – standing alone in a right hand turn into the riding stables there (the location is shown by the red circle on the map below).

The stone states it is “10 Miles From Manchester” and I have no reason to doubt that. It has clearly been used as a gatepost at some stage, and you can see the hole where the hinge was mounted.

As I turned around to leave the stables area I noticed another milestone, this one placed against the wall.

This one proclaimed itself to be ’13 Miles From Manchester’.

“Hmmmmm”, thought I. “Ice cream” thought Master Hamnett.

Now, I know what you are thinking… that Roe Cross is a geographical anomaly, being simultaneously both 10 and 13 miles from Manchester; a quantum place, if you will.

The two stones are obviously carved by the same hand and at the same time – the rounded top and squared shoulders are the same in both instances, and the stone is the same – a coarse sandstone. The writing is also the same, and with the ‘long S‘ in the word ‘Manchester’, we can roughly date it to not later than the first half of the 19th Century, and possibly a little before. After this time it falls out of use, and people used the ‘short S’.

So what are they doing there? I don’t know for certain, but I have a possible/probable answer.

The ‘Deep Cutting’ between Mottram and Matley/Roe Cross was opened in 1826 as part of the Manchester to Saltersford turnpike road. Essentially, it allowed easy access between Yorkshire and the east of the country, and Manchester and the west. Prior to this, the roads were in a terrible state of repair, and the heavily laden packhorses that made that journey really had to struggle. The turnpike roads were privately financed and built, and in order to recoup costs they operated as toll roads, charging for their use (think M6 Toll road for a modern comparison).

The toll gate at Roe Cross, the place you had to pay for passage, was situated here:

Map - Roe Cross — The Roe Cross Toll Gate is marked on the map (indicated by the arrow). The circle shows where the milestones are now situated. This from the 1875 1:2,500 OS map.

Now, obviously, the milestones are not in their original location, and I would like to suggest that they were originally situated near to, or at, the toll gate, showing the distance to Manchester along the road. However, if that was the case, then why the difference in distance? Well, perhaps the ’10 Mile’ sign was put next to the new road, whilst the ’13 Mile’ sign was by the original, old, road. With both signs showing, most people would want to shave 3 miles off their journey, and travel along a new well surfaced road, rather than along a muddy track, pitted with animal and cart ruts – after all look how many people use the M6 Toll Road. The tentative date of the stones, too, fits with the construction of the road – the first quarter of 19th Century.

Of course, once the toll gate ceased to exist, the stones lost their usefulness, and particularly once new, more clear, signs began to be used on the roads. However, instead of being broken up, their size and shape is perfect for a gatepost, and so they were hauled a few hundred yards up the hill and given a new function.

Well worth a look of you get chance, and there is lots of good walking to be had up there. I am going to have good explore myself sometime soon, particularly up Gallowsclough, which, as a placename, can have only one meaning – ‘the valley where they hanged people’. Blimey!

Incidentally, I love the Deep Cutting for the Mottram Frog Stone which is celebrated on the wall there, about half way down on the right (going from Mottram to Stalybridge). I couldn’t do this post and not mention it – I tweeted about it, but it is so good, that it needs to be celebrated on the blog, too.

The truth or plausibility of the story is much less important than the legend – no one criticises a fiction story for not being real, one just enjoys it!

The stone itself, marked with a green frog.

There may be more this weekend, if I can manage it, but I will try to get back to my one a week post target, so stick around. Thanks for reading, and please, as always, comments and corrections are always welcome.

Archaeology · Oddities

A Puzzling Piece of Pottery

June 29, 2018June 30, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

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).

Pot Mystery 1 — 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!

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:

Pot Mystery 3 — 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.

Archaeology

Pipes, Lovely Pipes!

June 29, 2018August 10, 2019 Tim Campbell-Green2 Comments

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.

POW — 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:

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!

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!

EDIT I 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“.

So there you go.

Guide Stoop · Stones of Glossop

Glossop Guide Stoop – Another Update

June 28, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

So, once again, I am forced to apologise for the lack of activity here of late – I expressly didn’t want the blog to be like the diary you start on New Year’s Day, full of good intentions, only for the next entry to be Auntie Mabel’s birthday sometime in July. The same can be said for those of you who I have not yet replied to their emails. So by way of an apology to you all, have a series of posts, starting with this one on the Guide Stoop.

Following on from the revelation here that one of the destinations on the stoop is probably Hayfield, I came across another example of a triangular guide stoop – this one is in the care of Saddleworth Museum and is kept in their outside/garden area.

Stoop 1 — The triangular guide stoop at Saddleworth Museum, similar in shape and style to our own.

It originally stood where the Standedge Road meets the A62 Huddersfield Road, and shows 6 destinations, two on each face, including Oldham, Manchester, and Huddersfield. Here’s how it would have originally looked:

Stoop 2 — *From Huddersfield Highways Down The Ages* by W.B. Crump

So this is similar to how the Glossop guide stoop would have looked… which got me thinking! If its original location was the top of Whitfield Cross, I wonder if the stoop would once have stood on top of the cross shaft. I find it unlikely that the guide stoop makers and installers would have made a new shaft if there was one standing in the right place already. Especially, as we must remember, by this time (early 18th Century) it had already lost its cross head, and due to puritan and Methodist views of the local people, would have lost all of its symbolism as a ‘Christian’ thing. In fact, so much so had it fallen from grace, that less than 100 years later it would be nicked and moved as a prank. So why not bung it on top of this convenient shaft?

Now, there is no evidence for this, and certainly there is no indication that anything was fixed to the remaining portion of the shaft as it is now, but we don’t know what was removed, or has worn away in its intervening 200 years standing as a stile. Just a thought.

Archaeology

A Garden Gift

May 9, 2018May 9, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green2 Comments

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!

Slate 1 — 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.

Slate 2 — 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.

Slate 3 — 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

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.

Slate Tab — 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.

As ever, comments and questions are most welcome.

More very soon.

Archaeology

The Contents of a Molehill

March 2, 2018March 4, 2018 Tim Campbell-Green7 Comments

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!