A Possible Pair of Post-Medieval Paths, a Potential Pub, and Plenty of Pottery.

July 12, 2020July 26, 2020 Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

As I have said many times before, I do love alliteration. What ho! and all that. I trust you are all keeping well in these odd times? Well, now this is a monumental post – it is precisely three years to the day that I made the first post on this blog (you can read it here if you want). When I first started it I had no idea what it was going to be, other than I had some interesting bits and pieces that I wanted to share, and which I thought other people living in Glossop moght be interested in. The blog is still pretty much that in aim – bits and pieces – and I was right… there are lots of you out there who seem to enjoy the ramblings of a man who gets excited by bits of old rubbish. So thank you, you wonderful people, for reading, and here’s to many more blog posts. Now, on with the show. RH

During the lockdown, Master Hamnett and I have been taking a daily constitutional up and around what has become known as the “secret passageways”. Overgrown and wild in places, even for a man of modest size such as myself it is a mysterious place, but to a 4 year old it is indeed another world. Naturally, I have been keeping an eye open for bits and pieces of history, and I think I have a story to tell. Possibly. Well, I certainly have some pottery to show, so there’s that!

The route we walk is essentially along Hague Street, down one track to Charlestown Road, along, and then up another back to Hague Street. We often continue on and round if it’s not raining, but always walk these paths, which I have helpfully marked Tracks 1 and 2 on the map below:

Tracks 1 & 2 at the top. Ignore the arrow and a circle for now… all will become clear!

The tracks and immediate area are more clearly shown on the 1968 1:2500 map

m10 — It’s a nice and short circular walk, if anyone fancies it.

The tracks are interesting in themselves in that they are once again an example of what I call the fossilisation of trackways – they are older tracks that no longer perform a function as such, but are preserved as footpaths. Certainly in this case as it makes no sense to have two tracks mere metres apart going between the same places. Instead, I think they are preserving the memory of a single older track, which I suggest below is Track 2, potentially the more interesting of the two. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Track 1 runs down the side of this house, which was originally a pub called the Seven Stars (hence the sign on the door frame, although the sign above the door is a mystery… if you are reading this and own the house, could you tell us?).

The one-time Seven Stars pub – I always feel a bit weird photographing people’s houses, but this is visible from the road, so it’s not as though I’m sneaking around gardens.

I know nothing about this establishment, but it was probably a beer house. As a reaction to the widespread and dangerous consumption of cheap gin – the so-called ‘Gin Craze’ of the late 18^th century – the government encouraged more beer drinking (beer being considered relatively healthy) by allowing householders to open up their houses to brew and sell ale. These private houses became known as beer houses, and the individual paid a small fee to the local magistrates in return for an annual license allowing them to sell beer, but not the wines or spirits that the normal pub or inn could. If anyone has any information about the Seven Stars, please do get in contact.

Just here is a series of upright stones presumably placed to stop horse riding or cycling. The gap between them is very thin; I might have put on a little weight during lockdown, but even I had to squeeze through.

Carved onto one of these uprights are the intials ‘M.D.’ – I must have walked through these 100 times and never noticed the letters before, but the light and the rain were just right this time.

M23 — And as you all know by now, I can’t resist carved graffiti.

Further down the footpath I noticed a reused quern or grind stone – possibly Victorian, but I suspect earlier – being used as a coping stone for the wall. And why not? It’s the perfect shape, and may well have been hanging around for centuries after being used to grind wheat into flour.

The worn central hole is visible, and it’s possible the other half is around here somewhere.

About halfway down, you come face to face with more of those upright stones, although in this case I can only assume they were put there to stop a headless horseman! Honestly, they are quite unnerving.

M19 — Not at all creepy and gravestone looking. Nope. Absolutely not.

The path continues:

M18 — Master Hamnett on the final stretch down to Charlestown Road. At the end of the path, in spring, there is a truly spectacular spread of wild garlic.

Until we arrive at Charlestown House, and the Charlestown Works that were – now demolished and awaiting houses.

M30 — The site awaiting re-generation. The hairpin bend where Charlestown Road meets Turnlee Road is visible. Whitley Nab in the background right, Casa d’Italia left (very nice pizza, highly recommended). Dead ahead is Lees Hall, which is important… stick around!

So, here’s the pottery:

A small assemblage of fairly typical Victorian bits, with a potentially earlier piece.

Top row, from the left: a base of a saucer or small plate; a huge chunky handle belonging to a large jug; a base of a glass jar or jug, or possibly from a tankard – it’s nice and decorative, but not expensive. Next is a fragment of a pedestal footed drinking cup, which is again fancy, but not especially expensive, it being just glazed earthernware. Then there is a rim to a large plate of some sort, being about 30cm in diameter.

The lower row from the left: a fragment of a stoneware bottle, a chunk of a pancheon, and a fragment of a manganese glazed jug or similar thick walled vessel. Then we have two pieces of blue and white earthernware, and a base of a tea cup. There is nothing massively interesting, and it all seems to be Victorian in date, as we might expect… except for the manganese glazed jug! This is, I think, earlier – perhaps early 18th century. It’s quite characteristic, and although there was a revival of manganese glazed pottery in the Victorian period, this glaze is of relatively poor quality, and the fabric (the actual clay of the pot) is quite rough, both of which suggest an earlier date. Then there is this lovely bit of pot; it’s a china dove, shaped to fit onto what would have been a tasteless Victorian jug or bowl – you can see the flat bit where it was joined to the vessel it flew away from.

Then there was this:

A screw bottle top, probably from a beer bottle or similar, and dating to the early 20th century. I love these things, and have blogged about them previously – here, for example. Unusually, this one doesn’t have the drink makers name or logo on the top, just the name of the bottler – R. Green of Leigh.

Moving on to Track 2, there is a noticeable difference between the two. This one is more of an actual track; it is certainly wide enough to drive a horse and cart down it, and it seems to have had a surface at some stage. It is also deeply worn in places, which can be suggestive of an older trackway.

M26 — Possibly worn by traffic, the track is quite deep in places.

M27 — It’s not much to look at, but this is the surface of the track.

I’d love to put a trench across this track to see how it was made up.

Further on, it has what seems to be a late 19th or probably early 20th century cast-iron streetlight, which is interesting and spookily out of place now, but suggests strongly that it was used as a ‘proper’ track until fairly recently.

m24 — It has seen better days, but there it is, slowly being overtaken by nature.

m25 — I can’t work out if it is gas or electric… further research is needed.

Right next to the streetlight is a gateway into a seemingly random field, and a benchmark on the gatepost – it’s been a while! This one – 616.77 above sea level – is a late addition as it is only marked on the 1968 1:2500 map. There was another benchmark marked on the opposite side of the track – 622.6ft above sea level – but it’s long gone (you can see it in the map above).

m13 — The bench mark. This is what 616.77ft above sea level looks like.

The track continues until daylight is reached.

m32 — I love this shot… artful (courtesy of the iphone filters, not talent on my part). Mrs and Master Hamnett providing the scale.

The top of the track, where it joins Hague Street again, is the site of the original Whitfield Methodist chapel – it is visible on the 1880 1:500 OS map:

Built in 1813, it had seating for 200 worshippers, and at one time was the home of the pulpit from which John Wesley had preached in New Mills (as discussed in this post). There are more details about the chapel on the Glossop Heritage webpage.

It was demolished in 1885, and the site is now occupied by a private house, but there are some interesting re-used stones on the trackway which almost certainly came from the chapel. The one indicated by the arrow in particular seems to have been a window frame – originally it would have laid upright, and you can see where the wooden frame was bedded in, and possibly a cross bar set into the stone.

A closer look reveals what might be a mason’s mark. Possibly… but then I really rather badly need glasses.

m31 — Squinting, after two glasses of wine, and with the eye of faith…

So then, the pottery:

m14 — Fairly standard stuff, but still nice.

Top row, left to right: a fragment of a large stoneware vessel with a cream glaze. I have photographed it showing the interior – it is roughly finished, and you can see wiping marks, and it probably came from a large cider flagon.

Next is an annular ware bowl or similar type, with the characteristic horizontal linear bands around the rim and below. Abrim from probably the same vessel is above it. Despite it looking 1950’s, this stuff ranges in date from the mid-18th century to the late Victorian; this is, I think, early 19th century. Next is a sherd of a cream ware jug, this being a part of the spout – you can tell by the twisted curve of the rim – again, early 19th century. Next is a stoneware flaring rim to a large jar, Victorian in date. Next we have a sherd of black glazed pottery which, I think, might be 18th century in date – the glaze seems to be lead based, which it isn’t in the Victorian period, and the fabric is very red, which is also common in Black Ware of the 18th century. I’ll post some more about this in the future – I’m actually trying to put together a crib sheet for pottery identification for this part of the country which some of you might be interested in (I know, I know, stop groaning… you don’t have to read this blog, you know. And I did say ‘some of you‘!). Beyond that is a fairly uninspiring selection of Victorian sherds at which even I pale!

Track 2 is odd – there’s summat rum about it. It has the air of a deserted roadway that was once of some importance, certainly important enough to have a substantial gateway and a streetlight on it. Looking at it, and thinking about the fossilisation I talked about above, I wonder if this was the line of an earlier track, perhaps even the medieval road that led from Whitfield to Lees Hall (which is circled in green in the first above – see, I told you it would all become apparent!). The hall, though 18th century in date now, stands on the site of a medieval manor house, possibly even the original manor house of Whitfield mentioned in the Domesday Book. It was certainly important in the medieval and early modern periods as the seat of the Manor of Glossop, where tax and tithe from Glossop and Whitfield was taken – first to the Earls of Shrewsbury, and then, from 1606 onwards, the Howards. The road from (Old) Glossop came through Cross Cliffe (discussed here), along what is now Cliffe Road through Whitfield, and from there down this track to Lees Hall. One less obvious part of it may be the footpath indicated by the orange arrow in the map above; I don’t think that it is the exact route the track would have taken, but it again ‘preserves’ the way in the landscape. I would suggest, then, that Track 2 is either this hugely important road fossilised into the landscape, or it broadly follows the line of that road which no longer exists. A point that may also support this is that on the 1968 OS map, also above, the track is marked by a series of ‘Boundary Mereing Symbols” (they look like lolipops – circles on sticks) which apparently indicates that it is the boundary of a parish or parish council (here, for an explanation). Boundaries, or meres, often use ancient and established objects or features to lay out the area that is bounded – an old track is a very common and perfect example of this type of feature.

This part of Glossop – I suppose technically Whitfield – is very interesting.

Right, that’s your lot for today. As always, please feel free to comment – even if it’s simply to tell me I’m talking out of my hat. I have more that I am picking away at, but until then stay safe and look after each other. Oh, and happy anniversary.

And as always I remain, your humble servant,

Archaeology · Pottery · Whitfield Well

The Walk Part 3: A Wall and Its Secrets

July 19, 2019August 20, 2019 Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

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?

Wall 1 — 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.

Wall - Codd 1 — 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.

Wall Codd Ball — 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.

Wall - Codd — 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.

Wall gree — 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.

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.

wall - bott — 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…

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.

Wall pi pe — 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).

So far, so Late Victorian. So what, then, is this doing in the mix?

Wall MP2 — 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 18^th 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.

wall - mid — The bunghole at the bottom is for draining the home brewed beer, leaving the grain on the base of the vessel.

Wall - MP Wipe — 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.

Wall - poor law — 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.

Wall Wall — 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.

9-e7d12363f2 — 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,

Your humble servant.