What ho! dear readers. I’ve just opened a bottle of fine Belgian pilsner, and am feeling quite effervescent, if that’s the word I’m fumbling for. I think it probably is.
Talking of fumbling, I went back to the place I found the lead came and had a fumble. Madam, please! This is a family blog. Honestly, some people! So there I was, fumbling, looking to see if anything else popped up, when I found what looks like window glass and some early pottery. Hmmmmmmm, let’s take a closer look.
Small and fairly unimpressive – I nearly ignored it. Shame on me!
The glass is only a small fragment – just 2cm x 1cm – and very thin, being a shade over 1mm thick. It is also flat, which just about rules out its origin being a bottle. I terms of colour, it has that blue-green tinge that you associate with early glass, before they managed to perfect the process to remove all the impurities. Looking more closely at it, I noticed that two of the edges were flat, and pulling out my new toy – a usb computer microscope that also takes photographs – I was able to see – and show you – tiny teeth like nibbles that tell me that the glass had been cut and shaped.
I’ve had a lot of fun with the microscope!
Now, I know a lot of useless information – for example that glass is shaped by nibbling – but I’ll admit that even I had to look up how exactly this was done. With a ‘Grozing Iron’ it turns out (see, don’t say you don’t learn something by reading this blog, although I can’t see it coming up in a pub quiz anytime soon). The verb is ‘to groze’, and the above glass fragment has been ‘grozed’. It looks like this:
A grozing Iron, image courtesy of the York Glaziers Trust who have a fantastic illustrated glossary, if you are in any way interested in glass.
So, it was shaped… but to what shape? The two edges, if they were extrapolated, didn’t make a right angle, but instead, a diagonal. A diamond, even. Could it be I have a fragment of the glass that went into the lead came I found? Impossible to say for certain, but it is possible, even probable. In terms of date, it’s very difficult to say. Broadly speaking, the thinner the glass, the earlier it is, and combined with the colour could certainly put it in late 17th or early 18th, which matches the tentative date for the came. So that’s exciting, if you get excited about this sort of thing… and I do! Here it is situ:
I added the came for effect – perhaps reuniting them.
The date of 18th century also matches the date of two sherds of pottery I found with the glass.
Again, quite small and uninspiring.
They are both mottled manganese ware, and classically early 18th century in date – certainly not later than about 1760. Interestingly, they are not particularly worn, so it’s unlikely that they have been kicking around for 250 years or so – perhaps there is a dump nearby? They are also both open vessels – bowls, probably – and may belong to the same vessel, despite one being glazed on the inside only (quite often, the glaze on the exterior was confined to the top part only). Also, one sherd shows the characteristic manufacturing marks, that also doubled as decoration:
The horizontal lines visible in the clay, formed on the potter’s wheel. Also, if anyone want to donate to the ‘Robert Hamnett Needs a Manicure‘ fund, please feel free…
The next photo shows the make up of the sherd – the reddish slipped exterior (top), the rough orange-brown earthernware fabric with tiny bits of stone in it (middle), and the thin dark line of the glazed interior (below). I love this stuff.
Lovely stuff!
I’m going to put together a quick and easy guide to pottery, describing all the different ‘parts’ of a sherd, and some tips on identifying what shape and size, as I think it’s nice to now what it is you are holding. I’m also still putting together my quick and dirty guide to Post-Medieval pottery, as there is a serious gap in the market… probably for obvious reasons!
I’m going to end with a great photograph of the glass, and to pose the following questions: Who was the last person to look through that window before us? And what did they see?
Makes you think.
Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. And I remain.
Mrs Hamnett complains that going for a walk with me is difficult – apparently I’m like a dog, running about looking for things. We’ll be walking along, talking, and I’ll disappear into a hedgeback or ditch, pulling out a bit of pot or stone, and leaving her talking to herself. Master Hamnett has now adopted the custom, and he regularly finds bits of pottery that he hands to me, looking very pleased with himself. This leaves small piles of pottery around the place, which get cleaned and put into bags with the intention of sharing them with you, gentle reader. And as you know, intention and actually doing are two widely different things – I’m going to have “well, I was going to, but what happened was…” carved on my headstone.
Well, not today. Today I do! I am seizing the day, grasping the nettle, taking the bull by the horns, striking whilst the iron is hot, and a host of other tired cliches. Today is a pot and other bits day… but first a cup of tea.
Right, that’s better! Off we go.
A few months ago I posted this, a toy soldier fund by Master Hamnett at the Spencer Masonic Hall/Sunday School at the top of Whitfield Avenue. Well, we went back recently, and blow me… we found some more.
Bizarre, and slightly creepy. I love these things.
Bizarre. I can only think that someone was using this as a place to play with their soldiers, and then lost them. As I said before, these were my childhood (I still have them). From right to left: a 1:32 scale Airfix British Commando (mid 1970’s to, well, now in date). Then we have a copy of a 1:32 scale Airfix British 8th Army Desert Rat; it says ‘Made in Hong Kong’ on the bottom, which dates it to pre-1997, when Hong Kong became Chinese. Then there is the lower half of Marvel’s Iron Man, which has the date 2005 on the base. I suppose these are technically ‘rubbish’, being deposited only in the last few years, but I reasoned that if I picked up a Victorian child’s marble, then why not these too. If you recognise them, and want them back, give me a message. Above the toys is a squashed thimble, again probably of relatively recent vintage.
Some other bits and pieces found in the grounds:
Other bits and pieces from the grounds of the Masonic Hall
From the top down, then. Randomly, fragments of a clay pigeon – which begs more questions than it answers. This is definitely rubbish, and will be going straight in the bin, but I thought I’d post it in the interests of completion. Below that, a copper roofing nail – Victorian or early 20th Century, and clearly from the roof of the building, dropped during a re-roofing, perhaps – I love these things, and have blogged about them previously. Below that, an ‘L-Headed’ machine cut wrought iron nail – probably used for flooring, and perhaps Victorian.
Continuing the revisit of that post, here is some more pottery from the area:
A small haul, and nothing too spectacular.
Some odds and ends. Top row, from left, then: the bottom of a jar of some sort – earthernware, and with the letters ‘A’ and ‘D’ impressed on the bottom. It’s possible this is ‘MARMALADE’, as it’s the right type of jar, but I don’t think it’s an ‘L’ before the letters. ‘M[AD]E IN ENGLAND’, perhaps? Next a saucer, then a black glazed open vessel, and then the chunky handle of a jug or similar, but certainly not a tea cup, the handles of which were delicate in the Victorian period, which is when all of this pottery dates from. Bottom row from left: a creamware jug, and from the curve of the sherd, this the rim of the spout; early Victorian, at a guess. Next, the base of an open bowl, then the interior shoulder of soup bowl, the base of a plate (complete with knife mark scratched into the glaze), and then the shoulder and neck of a small saltglazed stoneware bottle. Originally, it looked like this one, probably an ink bottle, and which has roughly the same dimensions:
A stoneware bottle which, incidentally, I found in a Victorian tip in Broadbottom.
Next up, we have some interesting new bits from below Lean Town, picked up whilst I was waiting for Master Hamnett to finish at the excellent Inside Out Forest School in Gnat Hole Woods, not too far from Nat Nutter, as it happens.
Some very nice bits here. Oi! You there! Not you, you! Stop sighing… I can hear you muttering under your breath you know, it is not a “pile of old crap”. Honestly, the nerve of some people.
Top row: sherd of earthernware with painted orange flowers, which I thought looked nice. Then we have two different shell-edge ware vessels decorated a blue scalloped edge. The one on the right is the earlier, being made between 1780 and 1810, whilst the sherd on the left was made between 1800 and 1830. Then a sherd of annular or banded ware – the decoration looks very 1950’s to modern, but this stuff – usually in blue (there is an example below) – actually starts being made in the 1790’s. This one is Victorian. Second row on the left, a base sherd from a basalt stone ware bowl, roughly 1780-1830-ish, It’s a lovely example, very thin walled and with the bottom of an acanthus leaf or something coming up from the bottom. They were heavily influenced by Classical pottery, and it looks Roman orAncient Greek from a distance, but was in fact made by Josiah Wedgewood’s factory in Staffordshire. Then we have the handle to a monstrous stone ware jug or storage jar, and although it looks almost medieval, it probably came from a Victorian water jug or something. Following on from the mega post about Lean Town I’ll add this lot to the bag of bits, and I’m sure more will wash out over winter.
Moving on, we have a rim sherd of a pancheon and another sherd picked up from a path that leads from Bankswood Park in Hadfield to Mouselow.
Big chunky rim – I love these things.
The smaller sherd is a from a cup or bowl with blue horizontal stripes on a white background – more annular or banded ware from the Victorian period. The larger sherd is part of the rim from a large pancheon – essentially a large mixing bowl that most kitchens in the 18th and 19th centuries would have had (I talked about them here). What looks like a yellow glaze is actually a clear glaze over a white slip – you can just about see it on the edges. Below is what it would have looked like, although this example is later and much smaller, the rim sherd suggesting a vessel 70+ cm in diameter.
A Victorian pancheon yesterday.
The path crosses another track which originally ran from Cemetery Road to Shaw, along what would become Shaw Lane, before it was bisected by the building of the railway.
The lane actually skirts the edge of the Iron Age hillfort, and parts of it are preserved in footpaths and tracks, but I don’t want to get into this here, as it is a topic of another post. However, here are some photos of Shaw Lane as it crosses Mouse Low – the above pot fragment was found at this junction with the footpath, marked in red on the map.
Overgrown and unused, this was Shaw Lane looking South West. In case you can’t see it, it’s the sunken road bit to the left of the tree in the centre of the photo. Apologies for the darkness.
Shaw Lane looking North East. I need to explore this track – it looks so appealing!
Next we have a small collection of bits from the bottom of Cross Cliffe, along the road edge and by the track there. Nothing earth shattering, but a good selection.
A good selection of bits, and a clay pipe!
Top row, from the left: a fairly substantial transfer printed soup bowl roughly 20cm in diameter; the base to a ceramic marmalade or preserve jar of about 10cm in diameter; a stoneware sherd from a storage jar of about 16cm in diameter. The thing that looks like a mint is either a button or the end to a hat pin, and is made from alabaster. Next row: sherd from a large jug or similar, with large hand-painted flowers on the exterior; rim of a stone ware ginger ale or lemonade bottle, with the very characteristic brown salt glazed surface; a fragment of willow pattern transfer-printed plate, and a stem of a clay pipe with, alas, no maker’s name, but some nice paring marks.
Ok, so this is turning into a far larger post than I had anticipated, and I’m going to draw a line under it for now – nobody, not even you, you wonderful and attentive people, wants to read a wall of text. Expect Part II either next time, or sometime in the future
So, to end with, for now at least, two superb examples of Glossop bricks, a gift from our equally superb neighbours (hello Helen and Sarah).
I love these things – simple and mundane, and literally stamped with their place of origin.
I don’t know a great deal about these bricks, but a future blog post might delve deeper. The company was based at Mouselow, with the clay extracted from nearby. It seems to have been founded in the 1920’s by a John Greenwood, and continued until the 1980’s. Somewhere in the garden I also have Glossop brick with both Greenwood’s name and Glossop printed on it – perhaps this was an earlier brick? There is some information on this website, but I can definitely feel a blog post coming on.
Bricks are so mundane, and yet so fascinating, and useful archaeological dating material too. And once they begin stamping the maker’s name into the frog (the dipped bit in the middle) – sometime around the mid-Victorian period – they become individual, too. I stumbled across this website the other day – a gigantic collection of photographs of bricks with the names showing, and all alphabetised; this is what the internet excels at, the dissemination of knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible, and it is truly magnificent. I look upon these bricks with envy, but silent and certain in the knowledge of one single fact: were I to start a ‘brick collection’ Mrs Hamnett would forcibly and violently eject me from the marital home. I would be a single and homeless (and brickless) man again before you could say “now wait, dash it all”. No, she puts up with quite enough as it is, so this injustice and pain is a weight I must bear with quiet resignation. However, if someone does have a spare shed, you can contact me in the usual way…
Right, that’s your lot! And it is a lot… too much, in fact! The question of “what am I going to with it all” never really occurs to me, and beyond the obvious “put it on the blog” I have no idea. I’m going to have a clearout soon, and get rid of the more boring bits and pieces – the plain white china, etc. and bury them somewhere for future archaeologists to ponder over. In fact, I was going to do it last week, but what happened was…
More soon, but until then, take care of yourselves and each other.
Apologies for the lack of posts recently, but things are a bit odd at the moment. Six weeks ago we were concerned about Covid19, but were still joking about it, and how it will amount to a fuss over nothing. Now, here I am in front of my computer in ‘lockdown’ for the foreseeable future, and a very real and sobering death count is still rising. It really is a strange time, and the country is a strange place; the start of it all reminds me of what my grandfather said of the ‘Phony War‘ – you knew something big was happening, but it wasn’t actually happening there and then. Well it is now.
Sadly, it also means that we have had to cancel all the tours and talks that I was involved in that were about to occur: in particular, the ‘By Seven Firs and Goldenstone‘ exploration of the legend and landscape of Alderley Edge, and the Objects Tell Stories evening of folklore and archaeology. Oh, and if you want to find out who I really am, you can watch me talking archaeology and ritual in the promo for that event here – I’m the one on the right.
More to the point, this has put something of a crimp in the Cabinet of Curiosities. Rest assured, though, I do have a backlog of posts that I have been trying to write that doesn’t involve me moving anywhere. And of course, there is now time to write… well there would be if Master Hamnett wasn’t being home schooled for the duration.
In the meantime let’s keep buggering on, as Churchill was fond of saying.
So I went for my state-mandated exercise the other day and found a few bits and pieces – random is the theme of today’s post. But first, a quiz. What’s this?
Ooooh, a mystery object!
I’ll give the answer at the end of the post… no peeking!
In the meantime, I spotted this sticking out of the ground:
Ooooh, thought I. The greenish colour of the glass gave it away as being older than mere litter, along with the thickness of the walls. Master Hamnett helped me hoik it out of the ground, and cleaned up it looks like this:
The lovely pale green colour is the result of impurities in the silicone, and dates it to the Victorian period or thereabouts.
You can just about make out the word ‘Glossop’ impressed in the glass. This was likely to have contained either carbonated water or beer, but a brief search of bottles reveals nothing similar. More research is definitely needed.
The small white object next to it is a fragment of a clay pipe, but interestingly, it has a some molded decoration on it. Here it is in close-up.
This is a fragment of stem, just at the point where it joins to the bowl. It is unclear what the completed decoration would look like – foliage perhaps? Dating clay pipe stems is always tricky, but the decorated types are usually late, so late Victorian is about right.
We later came across this stone with the letter ‘H’ carved on it, and being a connoisseur of such graffiti, I had to collect it.
A Hague Street ‘H’
It’s nicely executed with a flourish of decoration in the form of drilled holes between the arms of the ‘H’ – I’d give it a 7/10.
Right. That mystery object… did you get it? I believe you, honestly!
Ok, well, it’s a cheese press. Yes, you read that correctly! A cheese press. A thing for squeezing the whey out of cheese curds. Well, technically, it’s half of a cheese press – it’s missing the right half.
The square hole on the left is to house an upright pole which, along with another on the right, now missing, held the pressing weight in place. The circle and lines carved into the surface allowed the whey to run off, leaving behind the solids which are then matured to make cheese. Cheese was home made, or at least farm made in small batches, until relatively recently, so the press must have belonged to a farm nearby, as you aren’t going to shift that stone any great distance, when others, closer, would do to fill a hole.
The mystery object again.
Here’s a complete one in Bashall Eves in Lancashire:
Cheese press in Lancashire, and used to make, well, Lancashire Cheese. Image shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia.
And here is another one carved in the same manner as ours:
The cheese press in Draycott in the Moors churchyard. Photograph is courtesy of their local blog, and I hope they don’t mind me stealing it – please visit the blog here, it’s very good.
This one caused a bit of confusion, apparently – read all about it at this wonderful blog.
In terms of date… who knows? Certainly not hugely old – possibly Victorian, but equally possibly earlier. The only other one I have seen (which is how I know what it is) is propped up where I work at The Blackden Trust, and was in fact carved on the reverse of an old gravestone dated to the early 18th century, which at least gives us a date to work with. I’m going to write a little more about this soon, as it involves two of my greatest loves – archaeology and cheese… if we could just work in wine somehow, then it would be perfect.
Incidentally, the press is currently being used to fill a pot hole in a trackway, which I think is a shame. Sigh… I’ll add it to the list of historical objects things that need to be hoiked out and displayed properly (along with Whitfield Cross and the Whitfield Guide Stoop) – I think it would look great displayed at the wells. Seriously, I think we need to do something about reclaiming our heritage, as it is being slowly eroded. The guide stoop is currently under 3ft of soil, and looks like it will be left like that, So then, who’s with me?
Right. I’m off do some more gardening.
Please stay inside and stay safe, and take care of yourselves and each other.
I love Lean Town – it’s a good walk from my house (even Master Hamnett can do it with the minimum of fuss… mostly), and yet feels oddly distant. The houses are beautiful, and I sometimes feel a tiny pang of jealousy as I pass, so it’s nice to finally do this blog post that has honestly been years in the making. Part 2 is the finds.
Lean Town from the bottom.
As you can see from the above photograph, the houses are perched on the edge of a steep slope. Now, in the Victorian period, there was no rubbish collection – all household waste that couldn’t be fed to livestock, burned in the fire, reused, repaired, sold for scrap, or spread on the food crops, had to be disposed of by the individual. Now, I’ve probably mentioned this before, but humans are essentially lazy creatures. Almost as a rule, they will take only two considerations into account when disposing of rubbish: 1) can I see it? 2) can I smell it?
With this in mind, you can usually tell where a waste dump – or midden – will be by studying the area and asking a simple question: where would I put the it to get it out of my sight and smell, but with the minimum amount of hassle? Houses, situated on a steep slope, hmmm… there’s only one place they would chuck it. Any thoughts?
That’s right, well done, you guessed correctly and win a sherd of pottery (please email me with an address if you want it… I have many!). Over the back wall went the rubbish, and on the footpath below that wall went I. And by Jove, what a trove! This was all lying on the surface on the footpath that would have originally led from the houses to the well. Between myself and Master Hamnett we cleared out all we could see, but wait for the next rainfall, and more will pop up.
A proud parent! Master Hamnett was so excited to be picking the pottery up, stuffing it into his pocket, and walking along holding some in his hand. Like father like son…
So, what did we get? The short answer is masses of early Victorian to Edwardian bits and pieces – woo hoo! I divided the slope area into two sections: one directly below the back wall of the houses, and one a little further west along the slope.
The assemblage from below the houses. Very impressive, and with some interesting bits in it.
The assemblage from further west, also impressive.
Truthfully, they are both rubbish dump areas from the same set of houses, but old archaeological habits die hard, and it is easier to keep them separate than it is to re-separate them if I needed to after joining the groups. In pottery analysis we call this “splitting” as opposed to “lumping” – once lumped, pottery is almost impossible to split.
I’m only going to discuss the ‘interesting’ sherds here – there is a lot of it (see pictures above), and life is too short. As a pottery specialist, I have a system that I follow when studying pottery, the short version of which is that I look at only ‘feature’ sherds (bases, rims, handles, and decorated sherds), and discount the rest (there is also a very much longer version, believe me… I can talk for hours about it).
So then, here we are with the interesting bits. First up, below the houses:
The interesting bits from directly below the houses.
Top row: glass side to a square sauce bottle – possibly HP sauce, but certainly very common in the Late Victorian period; one can’t help but think their food was quite bland. Upper rim is from an open bowl, possibly a cooking pot. It measures 20cm in diameter, and is glazed in what appears to be a slip-ware glaze, which puts it late 18th early 19th century. Lower rim is from a stoneware open bowl with a flat lip, measuring 24cm in diameter – probably a mixing or serving bowl, and mid-19th Century in date. Next to that, the top to a stoneware ink or beer bottle, mid to late 19th Century – I love this, aesthetically, it just so pleasing. Next to that a very fine impressed mug or tankard, 10cm in diameter, with purple glazed body. This is very delicate and fine, and the impressed pattern is lovely, it’s possibly Wedgwood, but if not it would nonetheless have been expensive – which makes me think.
On the left we have a large sherd from a pancheon (a large milk or mixing bowl), with the interior, rim, and upper exterior surface glazed. Here we can see the upper exterior, with the classic dripped surface, which, rather than it being the result of a mistake, is a deliberate decoration. This example is very interesting, as it has been given a manganese ‘mottled ware’ glaze, rather than the usual black, which makes me think this is an early example – mid to late 18th Century, I would say. You can see a more common black example next to it, complete with external drips. Sherds from pancheons are quite common, due in part to most people having one, but also to the fact that they are large (larger examples can be 60-70cm across), which means they produce many sherds when broken. The clay they are made from is always reddish-orange, with pale yellow or grey folds badly mixed into it – don’t ask me why, but it is always so.
Greyish yellow folds within the clay. Is it odd that I find that quite appetising? Actually, perhaps a more important question is should I have shared that information with you, gentle readers?
Above the black pancheon sherd is a sherd of our old friend the feather edged ware bowl. It is another rather nice pearlware vessel, measuring perhaps 20cm in diameter, and was probably a shallow bowl with a flat edge. I have recently done some research on this type, and suggest a date of 1800-1830 for when this was made, which fits perfectly. A quick archaeological aside: when made, and when thrown away are two very different things – I have some of my grandmother’s crockery which I still use, and which must be at least 70 years old. Heirlooms like this do crop up in archaeology, and can cause problems, but generally, I would suggest that 10 years is probably a good innings for an average plate or bowl, especially when you remember there were few carpets and a lot of stone flagged floors.
The green glass fragment has the letter ‘F’ impressed on it, and is late Victorian or later. Next to that is a base to a delicate pearlware eggcup, measuring 4cm. Again, this is quite nice, as is the pearlware base and rim next to it (rim diameter of 18cm so a small plate or soup bowl). There are some spongeware sherds, and some blue and white transfer printed bits, including a green example which quite frankly shows how crappy some of these mass produced pots are – if you look closely, this one has a broken transfer roughly fitted together before being glazed. Above this, there is a moulded base to another very fine 18th Century tankard or mug. Below that, there is a creamware moulded bowl rim, probably quite early (1790-1800?), and again probably quite expensive. Finally, we have a group of stoneware vessels – bowls, storage jars, and the like. These are fairly standard, with impressed decoration (flowers, rouletting, and undulating lines), and date to, well, the Victorian period – made continuously, they were very utilitarian and common.
Next…
The interesting bits from further west.
Top left, is a large, rounded stoneware bottle or closed shape of some sort – beer, perhaps? Certainly Victorian in date. Next to it is a black ware sherd, with an inscibed decorative band on the exterior, and dating to the late-18th and early 19th centuries. The shiny glaze is the result of lead being added. Far right on the top row is a salt-glazed stoneware sherd, again from bottle, and you can just make out where it forms into the neck. This is interesting, as it looks like it is a continental stoneware – imported gin, perhaps? Below that is a base fragment from a small sauce or syrup bottle – the glass is early, judging by the colour, so perhaps mid-Victorian, but do continue into the 1920’s. These are normally hand blown into a mould, and have a rough rim where it is cracked off the mouth piece – check out a good example here. Actually, the whole website What The Victorians Threw Away is an amazing resource – essentially run by another lunatic like me, if you like this blog, you will love that whole project… it’s basically what I would like to do if I had the time and money (donations always gratefully recieved!).
To the left of that is a pair of feather edge fragments, both on a pearl ware background, and both of the same age as the above example. Below these is a clear glass cup with a handle; it’s moulded not cut glass, but is nonetheless quite nice and fancy. Below and left of this is a sponge ware sherd, possibly from a plate, and probably dating to the 1850’s. Above that (ignoring the tiny sherd) is a large fragment of a stoneware jam jar, and to the left of that is a large stoneware storage jar. The base diameter of this is 20cm, which makes it a monster – possibly a cider flagon, or similar. What is interesting is that it has a lot of wear on the bottom, meaning that it has been taken off and on a shelf or floor many times, and suggesting that it was refilled.
Below that is a large, roughly made, sherd from a large (2lb) stoneware jam jar, with the characteristic vertical fluting – once recognised, always seen! This has part of the base intact, with the words “ANCH” impressed into it.
I love it when I come across words. You can see clearly the stoneware fabric, and the glaze peeking through from the sides of the jar
Unless it was ‘ANCHOVIES’, this could only be “MANCHESTER”, and thus it has to be a Whittaker & Son’s jar, the base of which would have originally looked like this:
Love it! Moving on, below this, there are some random sherds, including four interesting ones. Top right, with the black tree on a brown background, is actually from a Mocha Ware pot, and would have originally looked something like this:
Mocha Ware. I can’t make up my mind whether it is truly hideous or whether I like it?
The tree like effect is created by applying, amongst other things, tobacco juice to the slip, where it spreads to create the effect you can see. In terms of date, it begins to be made in the late 18th century, but this is probably early Victorian. There are other Mocha Ware sherds throughout the pile I found in Lean Town (for example, the sherd immediately below this one, or the two sherds below the bottle top in the first photograph), so it seems to have been quite popular here.
In the middle of the group is a base to a pearl ware bowl – quite fine, again, and small, with a base diameter of 6cm. Bottom left is an open bowl of mid-late 18th century date, in a slip-ware glaze. Right of that is another very fine tankard with a moulded base, and dating again to the late 18th century. To the right of the group, there is a delicate blue painted porcelain fragment, again thin and very fine, and quite expensive. To the right, we have some clay pipes – nothing interesting there, I just like them! Below them there is some more of the brown glazed stoneware – bowls and jars, and including a handle from a hefty jug, which in my mind was filled with frothy home-made ale (but then, to be fair, most thing in my mind are).
That’s the end of the pottery, but now for the other material. In archaeology we make a distinction between what we call ‘bulk finds’, that is, material (usually pottery) that occurs in large quantities, and ‘small finds’, which are individual items, unique to the site or objects that can tell us more about the site than the bulk finds. Often there is overlap – a piece of pottery with an inscription, for example – and usually the small finds are what most people would call ‘the goodies’! And so it is here:
The small finds.
The stone on the left is, I think, a whetstone, used for sharpening knives. It is flat on both sides, worn on the surface and edges, and is the perfect shape, size, and stone type. It was probably discarded after being dropped and broken. Top is a glass stopper from a rather nice serving jar or wine carafe. It’s very delicate and beautiful – hand blown and hollow, with delicate cuts to give it a texture and grip around the top. Below this are a pair of marbles – right is brown glass with a white ribbon running through it – it’s worn, well loved, and certainly late Victorian. Left is a small, roughly made, ceramic marble, partly glazed and misshapen. Possibly early Victorian in date. Bottom is a tiny (2mm) glass bead, possibly from a decorated bag or similar. It’s lovely, and one assumes it was lost in the house, swept up, and thrown away with the rubbish. Don’t ask me how I spotted it… it just stood out against the soil.
So there we have it, Lean Town via the rubbish it once threw away, but what can we say? Firstly, the date. A lot of the material dates to the late 18th and early-mid 19th century, that is to the first decades of people living in the houses here. This is interesting, and suggests perhaps that in the late Victorian period, they buried most of their rubbish elsewhere. The second thing that stands out is the quality of the material – it better than you would expect from a simple worker’s household – some of it is very fine and tasteful, and it seems to have been expensive. Certainly the fine tankards, and the possible Wedgwood cup were, but also things like the glass stopper, the porcelain, and the pearl ware – not what I would expect from a humble mill worker’s house. I would suggest that after building it, Elizabeth Hampson lived here, or if not her, then someone like her – someone fairly well-to-do with taste. A little more research might reveal much more.
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And finally, of course, what’s a blog post without a brace or two of benchmarks? There were several marked on the map:
The upper part of the lane and…
The lower part of the lane, including Lean Town itself and the footbridge.
Number 1 was easy to spot, although I suspect that the wall has been rebuilt, so it might not be in exactly the correct spot. Nonetheless, excellent work by whoever rebuilt the wall to include the benchmark – very conscientious! Here it is in all its glory.
This is what 705ft above see level looks like. Probably. I love the veining on the rock its carved on – each line representing a splashing wave laying down sand on a beach millions of years ago. Wow, that got deep!
Number 2 was also an easy spot, on the wall leading down.
This one is a bit worn, and seems to have been made sometime in the 1950’s or 60’s, as it doesn’t show on the earlier OS maps, so we have to go metric for this spot height – 201.34m above sea level (which Google informs me is 660.5ft in old money)
Number 3 should have been on the south east corner of the row of houses – I looked and couldn’t see anything (I didn’t look closely – nobody wants to be ‘that man who peered over our gate’, that’s how rumours start). According to this bench mark spotter’s website, the mark is definitely still there, but alas, I have no photo to show you.
Number 4, however, was there, on the stone base to the bridge across Bray Clough Brook.
The bridge has never struck me as being particularly old, and the bench mark doesn’t show on maps until the 1960’s, so I presume this is contemporary with Number 2 above. Anyway, here we are at 180.85m above sea level.
Bray Clough Brook joins Long Clough Brook a little farther upstream, and in turn it joins Glossop Brook at the bottom of Primrose Lane – I blogged about the confluence here.
Right then, I think that’s about it (I can hear you, you know, breathing a sigh of relief). I will try and be a bit more frequent in my posting… and try to tackle smaller subjects! When I started to write this, I really had no idea how large a post it would become! But there you go. Please, any comments and ideas are always welcome. More soon, I promise.
A brief one today. Taking advantage of the lull in the rain coupled with a bit of a breeze, Master Hamnett and I went to fly a kite in the fields off Hague Street. On the way back, I found some bits of pottery which spurred me into doing the blog post that I have been thinking of doing for some time.
Just in case you get lost. Actually, it’s a nice touch, and I wonder where else the impressed concrete road names were placed.
Whitfield Avenue runs downhill in a broadly NW – SE bearing from Hague Street to meet with Charlestown Road, and is parallel to Whitfield Cross.
Whitfield Avenue runs north-west – south-east. For orientation, The Beehive pub is indicated by the arrow. (1974 OS map)
At first glance, it is not a particularly interesting road. The product of the 1960’s demolition and rebuild of the Whitfield area, the road didn’t exist prior to this, as you can see from the map below.
This is the 1921 OS map, and again, The Beehive is indicated.
What is there is a footpath, walled for most of its length, along the long thin fields that characterise the fields of Whitfield – possibly a survival of the medieval ‘croft and toft‘ field system, or more likely a result of the enclosure of the land there in the early 19th Century. This is interesting, as we shall see, but it also probably explains why the council chose there as the location of the road – using an already existing path.
Whitfield Avenue from Hague Street looking down to St James’s Church and Charlestown Road. On the ridge line in the distance, on either side of the left hand tree, is All Saints Mottram (left) and the Deep Cutting at Roe Cross (right).
Historically, then, it is interesting, but not exactly earth-shattering. That is, until you peel back the modern, and take a closer look.
Hague Street was the original packhorse road from Chapel en le Frith to Glossop (now, Old Glossop) – there is some discussion about the road, here, and there is the Glossop Guide Stoop, too (and more here). It was an important route, and the village of Whitfield grew around it – this is the oldest part of the area. Dating for this road is tricky – we know it was there in the 10th Century, as the Whitfield Cross was placed at the junction of Hague Street and Whitfield Cross (the road), and presumably some form of settlement – perhaps just a farmhouse – was there at the time. Beyond this, however, we have no evidence. However…
In the early 1970’s a series of excavations were carried out by two archaeologists – Peter Wroe and Peter Mellor – in order to establish the line of the Roman roads to and from Melandra Fort. Although this thorny and difficult subject has been much debated (and only recently – possibly – put to rest), they made great leaps. One of the roads, that coming from Navio Fort (Brough, near Castleton) passes through Brownhill, and comes through Hob Hill Meadows, and continues down the line of what is now Whitfield Avenue. From there it travels down the road that are now known as Hollincross Lane and Pikes Lane, and over into the fort.
Yes, you read that correctly, Hollincross Lane/Pikes Lane, especially its latter part toward Pikes Farm, is a Roman road.
The line of the Roman road is shown in green, leading down what will become Whitfield Avenue and onto Hollincross Lane and Pikes Lane, and then to Melandra Fort.
The excavations not only revealed the broad line of the road, but also how the road was built. The next picture shows what is called an archaeological section drawing – essentially a slice of the road was taken out, and the side of the slice was drawn showing the layers that made up the road. And all this is just 1ft below the ground, which is quite remarkable.
The upper section shows what is marked ‘Brownhill’ on the above map, the lower shows ‘Hobhill’. The road is very clear, and very large, too.
Interestingly, and as an aside, Hob Hill as a placename means ‘Devil’s Hill’ – I have said it before, I love it when folklore and history meet.
The ‘original’ footpath on the first map pretty much follows the line of the Roman Road. This is interesting, and suggests that the path used the surface of the Roman road, or a later incarnation of it; there is no point in making a new path if you can use an existing one, especially if that one has a good surface. What I like about this is that a road built 2000 years ago, directly dictated to the council the course of a road built in the 1960’s. History affects us in the present in many ways.
At the top of the road stands this wonderful, forlorn, and if I’m a little honest, slightly terrifying, building – the former Chapel/Sunday School.
I can’t be the only one who gets weird Amityville vibes from this building, can I? It is the ‘house on the hill’ after all.
I have always been intrigued by this building, and so taking advantage of the open gate, I had a look around.
Master Hamnett having a look around.
It’s really quite a lovely, if very Victorian, building, full of nice touches.
The quoins give it a rather grand air, with some nice masonry.
Ornamental ironwork, sadly in disrepair, and in need of painting. An artful shot looking down Whitfield Avenue – very unlike me!
There is also a datestone, helpfully recording the dates of the original construction, the rebuild, and what its function was.
I do love the Victorian literal approach to recording things – it really helps us historical types.
Actually, it was also altered a third time in 1931 to incorporate the chapel further up Hague Street which by then had fallen into disuse. This Methodist chapel (itself rebuilt from the original 1813 version), had once contained the pulpit from which John Wesley had preached, and which in 2010 was returned to its rightful home in New Mills (see here for information and photograph).
The 1885 rebuild had four cornerstones embedded into it, recording the local worthies who attended the ceremony, and which allow us a peek into Late Victorian Glossop life. Here they are:
“This stone was laid by Captain Partington. June 6th 1885”
“This stone was laid by Mr Alfred Leech. June 6th 1885”
“This stone was laid by Mr John Sellars. June 6th 1885”
“This stone was laid by W.S. Rhodes esq. J.P. June 6th 1885”
So these are the stones, but who are these people?
Captain Edward Partington: Partington was a very important person in Glossop’s Victorian history – his biography is impressive, but in summary he was born in 1836, and moved to Glossop in 1873, buying up all sorts of mill concerns, and ending up Rt. Hon. Edward Baron DoverdaleRt. Hon. Edward Baron Doverdale, dying in 1925. He did a huge amount of philanthropic work around the town (funding the library, for example), and served as Captain in the 3rd Derbyshire (Volunteers) Rifle Corps. Oh, and was a mean rugby player, by all accounts.
Alfred Leech: There is very little information about Mr Leech that I can find. He crops up in a number of interesting places associated with Glossop society, and he is mentioned in the London Gazette as being elected as a land tax commissioner. His address is given as Cowbrook Cottage, Sheffield Road, Glossop. More research is clearly needed!
W. S. Rhodes: William Shepley Rhodes was a councillor, alderman and mayor for varying amounts of time. The Rhodes family were involved in various mill concerns in the aream and are well known. William was also known as a strong athlete and a good sportsman, being the president of the Glossop Cricket Club for a while.
So there you are – the more you know… or less, in some cases.
The chapel/Sunday school continued in use until Easter Sunday 1968 when it had its last service. It is now known as the Spencer Masonic Hall, and is where, from 1973 onward, the Freemasons Lodge of Hadfield 3584 have met on the first Thursday of each month. And at some stage it was up for sale – the sales brochure can be seen here (complete with interior view!). It’s a lovely building, but very neglected and tatty on the outside, and it’s a bit of shame that something more isn’t made of it.
The pottery, then. Obviously it would be nice to find something Roman, but sadly no such luck. Instead, we have a selection of Victorian material, which might be the remains of household rubbish from the houses that once stood there (see above map), but equally might result from the process of nightsoiling. On balance, it is probably the former – there is no arable land in the area where I found the pottery, and the edges of the sherds are still sharp in some examples, and when pottery sherds are ploughed, the edges become rounded. There is nothing too exciting, but nice to see.
A modest selection of Victorian bits.
Top row, left to right: A shallow dish or saucer, transfer printed, and probably late Victorian, but difficult to date. Next to that are two sherds of a large Victorian cooking pot, very characteristic with thick walls, a black glazed interior, and a plain glazed reddish-orange exterior. They are made that way so that the heat can transfer through the unglazed side easily, but the glazed interior means that it is waterproof, and so holds the liquid well; quite clever really! Next is a willow pattern plate – very boring, but is patterned on both sides, so is from an open bowl type of vessel. Next, a glazed earthernware pot with grooved exterior – it’s probably a storage jar or something similar.
Middle row: Victorian glass fragment (the greenish/bluish tinge gives away its date), with a raised letter ‘T’ – clearly a company name or similar. Next, a plain sherd from a flaring rim from a soup bowl or similar; possibly early Victorian, as it has a slightly creamy opalescent glaze. Next, a handle from something – cup or bowl. Next, an early Victorian sponge ware sherd – the blue pattern actually printed, potato-like, on a sea sponge. This is the base to a bowl of some sort (base diameter is 12cm, so not huge), and judging from the wear on the ring foot, was a much used and loved bowl before it was broken. Next, a sherd from a large cup or similar (c.15cm diameter), with transfer printed decoration. After that is a blue and white striped fragment, probably from a cup or similar. Next is a stoneware fragment from a storage jar or similar, fairly bog standard (there is some discussion of the type and the method here). End, is a clay pipe stem (from toward the bowl), and has a some nice paring marks on the body, but is fairly boring stuff (although I do love them).
Bottom row: All featureless white body sherds.
As I said, overall a fairly standard, if uninspiring, collection of Victorian pottery, and almost exactly as one would expect to find (although I do like the spongeware!). The best find, however, was found by Master Hamnett amongst the rubble and rubbish outside the Masonic Hall.
C.1980 vintage plastic soldier, courtesy of eagle-eyed Master Hamnett.
This was pretty much my childhood – plastic soldiers at a 1:32 scale. Whilst this one is not Airfix, it is still a good quality World War 2 figure – possibly Polish or Russian to judge from the helmet and gun. He’s lost his foot, and his stand, but to his credit he’s still fighting. Interestingly, he was also painted at some stage, too, and not professionally, so I think he was a much loved toy (if anyone recognises it, I’ll happily post it to them… I still mourn the loss of some of my soldiers!).
Of course, it wouldn’t be a decent post without a benchmark. On the original path there are three on the line of the track – from the top, a third of the way down (640.7 ft above sea level), one half way down (609.1), and one at the bottom (568.6).
The 1969 map (post Whitfield Avenue construction) has three benchmarks, but are of different heights (641.5, 601.5, & 564.9), and with this last on a now no longer existing ‘public convenience’ at the bottom of the road. Presumably they were re-surveyed and marked when the road was built, as the evidence of the carving seems to indicate. The only one that is still extant is the middle of the three, the others seem to have disappeared, alas.
An old stone block, rebuilt into the 1960’s wall, and with a new benchmark carved into it. 195.5 metres above sea level (641.4 ft in old money)
So, a lot of history and archaeology of a single road were explored on a single afternoon
Master Hamnett looking like he owns the place.
And, of course, we flew a kite, which was the best bit!
A successful day for Master Hamnett, too.
Well, that turned into a much larger post than I anticipated… who knew a 1960’s built street could be so interesting? Comments, as always, very welcome.
Welcome back for the third and final instalment… it was a very productive walk indeed! The first two are here and here.
As we continued along the track, we came down, toward the place where it joins Cliffe Road, near where the Guide Stoop is. Here, the wall on the left has been removed, and replaced by a fence, but at the bottom of the track, there is a stump of the wall left, ruined. And spilling out of the wall’s innards, so to speak, I noticed some glass, some pottery and a black tubular object. Well, I could hardly leave them there, could I?
As you can see, the wall is not in great condition, and the bits spilled out.
So then, what do we have?
Firstly, fragments of a Codd Bottle.
The fragment on the right is from the neck going into the rim.
Invented by Hiram Codd (great name!), he patented the famous design in 1872, and began manufacturing them on a large scale in 1877, or thereabouts. This groundbreaking design was a way of keeping fizzy drinks carbonated using a glass ‘marble’ inside the bottle, with the gas keeping the marble pushed firmly against a rubber seal. When empty, they were often broken open by children to retrieve the marble; here is one I found in my garden a few months ago.
Hand made in two halves (you can just about make out the seam), it contains many small air bubbles. It’s quite a pretty, if utilitarian, thing. I really should blog about my garden finds sometime.
The bottle was broken before it went into the wall, and you can see that different fragments had different amounts of soot and air exposure, causing the variation in colour. I spent a happy 5 minutes gluing this together – superglue really is a marvel! Anyway, here is a complete Codd Bottle, showing its very distinctive ‘pinched’ shoulder/neck, very thick glass, and you can just make out the marble in the neck.
A lemonade Codd bottle from this great website here. Worth an explore.
It remained in use until perhaps the 1910’s, when other, more simple, designs – mainly the screw stopper – replaced it as a way of keeping drinks carbonated. Here is an excellent website that talks a bit about them – it is well worth an explore.
Next is a piece of green glass bottle dating from the 1870’s on, and which probably held mineral water or beer.
A moulded bottle – probably a beer bottle. You can see the shield border on the left.
This one was moulded, not blown, and has the remains of an embossed decorative shield that would have shown the manufacturer. Each company would have its own design, and usually they were locally made, so it might be a Glossop bottle. Here is a whole example of a bottle showing what I mean.
One green bottle…
There is a fascinating website here that discusses coloured glass from a historical archaeological approach, and despite being American in focus, it is very useful, and well worth an explore – it is one I return to time and again for facts and identification help.
Another bottle fragment, this time a concave base, and with an moulded number ’13’ on the bottom.
You can see the number ’13’ clearly at the bottom.
It has a base diameter of 8cm, is made of thick glass, and judging from the wear marks on the base rim, the bottle was used over a period of time, or possibly used and re-used. Late Victorian is a guess in terms of date (thick glass & greenish hue).
Then there is this…
Nope… not a clue!
It is glass, broken, and has a raised bump on one side, centred over a feature on the other side. This feature – visible in the above photograph – is circular, tube-like and hollow, and has an impressed mark in the centre, made when the glass was still soft. The only other features are a pair of parallel lines running diagonally to the right of this central feature, and scored onto the object when the glass was cold. The glass itself is thick, full of air bubbles, and has a greenish tint, all of which suggests that it is old (Victorian or earlier)
I have literally no idea what this is. None whatsoever. Answers on a postcard, please.
The black object is interesting; on closer inspection, it turns out that it is a pipe stem.
Hollow throughout, the left side is flattening to the mouthpiece.
Made from Ebonite (also known as Vulcanite), a type of hardened rubber, it is the bit that fits into the mouth, and through which the smoke is drawn. It is made as a separate part, fitting into the bowl via a metal ferrule – you can see the rounded end in the photograph. The other end, though broken, is of the ‘fish tail’ type stem, flat and wide, and would have originally had a lip at the end. Ebonite is still used for making pipe stems, but was first created by Charles Goodyear in 1839, with the process of making it patented in England by a Thomas Hancock in 1843. It was immediately put to all sorts of uses as a cheap durable alternative to Ebony wood, and from the 1850’s on, it was used in the making of pipe stems (another interesting website here).
You can see the way it was used in this Late Victorian trade catalogue – the wall example even has the slight curve.
So far, so Late Victorian. So what, then, is this doing in the mix?
Midlands Purple Ware dating from roughly the early 18th Century.
This is Midlands Purple Ware, a type of coarse stoneware. It is hard (fired at a high temperature), purple (though can be more orange or red), and has a large number of black and white inclusions (they look like salt and pepper). It’s very characteristic, and once you know it, you can spot it a mile away. Midlands Purple was made in huge quantities between about 1600 and 1750 (although some sources state its production started earlier, I go with this date for the classic Midlands Purple), although I think this example is late (early to mid 18th century). What is interesting is that this pot was found mixed with the Victorian material – in the top photo, you can see the pipe stem lying underneath one of the Purple Ware sherds. I’ll return to this below.
These fragments (mended) come from the base of a pot, and using the internal wiping marks at the start of the upturn of the vessel wall, I would suggest a base diameter of 25cm, and it probably comes from a large storage vessel, such as this beer container. Most houses and farms would have brewed their own beer as it was cleaner than the water at the time.
The bunghole at the bottom is for draining the home brewed beer, leaving the grain on the base of the vessel.
Close up showing the internal wiping marks (where the potter had run a rag around inside the vessels when it was still wet) and the start of the vessel wall. From these marks I was able to extrapolate a base diameter of 25cm.
So what does all this mean?
Well, we know that the wall is much earlier than the Victorian glass – it is here on the 1857 Poor Law map of Whitfield, for example – and almost certainly dates from the initial enclosure of the fields and moors in 1813.
1857 Poor Law map. The wall is running NW-SE between two large quarries.
The Late Victorian material probably represents a rebuilding episode. The wall itself is still in bad repair, and I think I can detect at least three phases of construction too.
The wall showing multiple rebuilds and repairs.
The Midlands Purple Ware is clearly much older than the wall, and is something of a conundrum – what is it doing here? It might represent residual rubbish incorporated into the wall. However, it is perhaps more likely the pot was still in use 100 years after it was made, but broke as the wall was being built in 1813, and ended up used as filler. Possibly. And it was then reincorporated into the wall as it was being repaired in the 1890’s. Again, possibly.
Now here is where it gets interesting.
Why would the repairer of a field wall place a Codd bottle, a beer bottle, and a pipe stem in the wall? Pottery and rubbish is often used as a foundation bedding for a wall at this period (I have a pile from my garden that I need to blog about), but these are high up in the wall. But it does seem that the obvious answer is rubbish disposal. In this scenario, the builder has a break, smokes his pipe, but then accidentally breaks it. He finishes his bottle of fizzy water, and another of beer, then accidentally breaks them both. He curses, then places some, but not all, of the fragments in the wall, along with some other bits and pieces, and carries on building. 100 years later I find it, and here we are.
This interpretation seems fair enough. But it seems a little too convenient – a discrete, neat, bundle, carefully walled up. And the fact that only fragments were placed, not the whole thing. It would also have taken effort to do this, too, when surely it would have been easier to simply have thrown them into the field.
“Hmmm…” I say.
However, there might be another reason.
I have recently been doing research into the tradition of hidden objects within the fabric of buildings (here is a great website that deals with the subject). Shoes, famously, have been found in the roof and around the fireplace of 1000’s of buildings up and down the country, as well as in colonial America and Australia (I have one from the Glossop area that needs to be blogged about). But it is not just shoes, these caches contain all sort of clothes, and indeed all sorts of objects – including bottles, pottery, and pipes – and all dating from c.1600 to 1900.
A deposit of various objects from a farmhouse in Suffolk. Taken from an article by Timothy Easton (the copyright is all his, and I have stolen the photograph for illustrative purposes only). And no, that’s not me in the photo.
The term used to describe these caches is a ‘Spiritual Midden’, with the idea being that each of the objects is placed in the cache at the end of its useful life, and is then sealed away and hidden from view in a midden. The study of this tradition is relatively new – bundles of rags and objects when discovered are usually thrown away – and it is little understood beyond a general consensus that they are broadly connected with concepts of ‘luck’ and ‘protection’ from evil or witchcraft. They are believed to be ‘apotropaic’ (that is, they ‘turn away’ evil – I blogged about the subject here and will return to it again, as I find it fascinating). Briefly, spiritual middens seemed to have functioned by making the deposit of clothing and objects the target of bad luck or witchcraft, rather than the people within the house. In a real sense the cache stands for, or personifies, the individuals within, and acts as a lightning rod for any negative energy, safely diffusing it.
The ‘meaning’ of the individual items within the midden is unclear. The shoes, gloves, trousers, and other garments are the most obvious – they are very personal items, and are usually deposited worn out, meaning they have, in a sense, moulded to the individual, and have been imbued with their essence. The bottles are less clear; perhaps connected with ‘witch bottles‘. Bones may relate in some sense to food, and pipes have been suggested as connected with fire, or more specifically fire prevention. This is all speculation, of course, but something is going on with deposits of objects from the early 17th century on, and which lasts until the end of the Victorian period. Perhaps, then, we are seeing a decayed form of this deposition ritual in the objects hidden during the wall rebuild in the 1890’s. Of course, by this time the ‘meaning’ of the caches, whatever it was, would likely have been lost, and the ritual of hiding certain objects was carried out as a ‘tradition’ or ‘thing we do’, or simply ‘for luck’, with none of the belief that drove and informed earlier caches.
This interpretation is made all the more plausible by the fact that the location of the ‘cache’, if such it is, is at the very end of the wall. Thus, it represents either the very first part of the wall begun, or it forms the last section made; either way, the deposition of objects there seems appropriate. There is also the tantalising possibility that the Midland Purple Ware pot base also represents the remains of a similar, earlier, cache. A small cache of objects deposited for luck, to help the wall stay upright, and the land and its owner prosper.
But then again, of course, it could just be rubbish!
If you are interested in Spiritual Middens and hidden objects, there is an excellent paper here which discusses the contents and their meaning. It’s written for the general reader, so it’s not too theory heavy, and it contains links to other papers on the subject. Also, you can email me for more information, as it is a special interest of mine, and one that is only now receiving attention.
As always, comments are welcomed… even encouraged. More soon, I promise, but until then, I remain,
The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities 