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Brickyard Lane, Pt. II:
Slogging on (and on, and on).
After the excitement of the 1st October dig, digging the Brickyard Lane dump turned into a long hard slog. From October to the end of December 2005 we spent 17 more days on the Brickyard Lane site. Almost every one of these was great fun, with a steady trickle of decent finds and a flood of local bulk, but the mega-finds didn’t happen. As we moved along the pond edge the seam got deeper into the water until it stabilised at about 3 feet. The pond edge itself was mostly left alone at this time, to be dug in warmer and drier weather.
This picture shows the usual depth of the water, to the bottom of the seam, as we moved away from the trees. It took us a while to get used to digging in this muck, but once we got a system going it wasn’t as bad as it looks. In this hole the seam didn’t start until a foot below the water, and was only a foot or so thick. It still produced though! The two Gainsborough GBs came out almost in the same forkful. This was turning out to be a good site for GBs, but most of the glass was in very bad condition: sick, chipped and scuffed.
It was mucky work. We moved on to chest waders at this point. They made life a lot easier. A few of our better days on the site were:
16th October.
By this time we were moving systematically along the pond edge, and had reached an area that had been heavily dug to just above the seam by illegal diggers (no, we couldn’t figure that one out either). Very messy, with a 2 to 3 foot cap of thick sticky clay, but nice seam between 12” and 2ft thick below that, and as usual absolutely rattling with stuff. This hole produced a couple of heartbreakers: a huge, one-only-known, champagne shape porter from W Dewick / Gainsboro, minus lip, and an almost perfect Davies Beavis patent, but with a small hole in the cross-pinch in the back of the neck (it looks suspiciously as though my fork prong went through it. Arrrrghhhh!). These Beavis codds are fantastic bottles, with one of the best and largest pictorial trade marks imaginable. They are also very rare.
Below: A John Davies trade mark. This one is on a beer bottle, but most of the codds, including Beavis patents, have the same embossing. Of course the gingers don’t have the trade mark. That would be too much to hope for.
When we dug up the bank Darren hit a spot that was full of stuff, where he pulled out yet another of the John Davies GBs (watch the video here), along with a small group of other bottles.
The finds on 16th October: Porters, GBs, cylinders, codds (including holed Beavis patent, bottom centre) and lots of bulk.
22nd October.
This day produced our second Economic, but it was badly damaged with the lip missing and a huge chunk of the back falling out. Along with the Eco were two very rare local porters (quart size "E C Davies / Gainsboro" and pint size "Rayner Junr / Ferry") and a previously unrecorded salt glaze porter from Hull, impressed "W Dossor / Hull", with the Burton Codnor Park pottery stamp (datable to 1821 – 1832). This also had damage, with most of the lip missing, but was still a great find. All four of these were in one little group, so far as we could tell only about 6” under the bottom of one of the strange shallow illegal holes.
20th November. 'The Broken Ginger Beers Hole'.
By this time we had finished digging away from the trees (except for the too-deep pond edge), and were back near the area where we had started. This was the part of the tip most heavily dug by the no-permission diggers. Most of the digging in this area was slow and boring work (watch a boring bit of digging on video here. You'll see how boring it was), but we found one large area that was a lot more interesting. The cap there was less than 2 feet thick, and the seam was partly above water. Sheer luxury. We got almost 20 broken GBs from this hole, including part of the base of an Economic (still only the third on the tip, and by now we had turned over more than half the site).
Whole items included: two GBs (Walton of Grimsby, all white std with Chameleon TM - watch the video here) and a Harrison of Gainsboro (tt champ); three bulb neck codds from Harrison, one 10oz codd Original from Harrison, and one 6oz Original from Davies. The star turn was a badly stained but rare and early red print lid for Bentleys Circassian Cream.
The pile of broken codds and GBs. Among the broken gingers was only the second known example of John Davies ‘early’ style GB, with the writing in an oval.
The Walton GB from Grimsby, Harrison GB from Gainsboro, Bentleys Circassiam Cream lid, and part of the base of an Economic Supply Co GB.
Below: The seam they came from. This is one of the very few times when the seam was above water and we actually got to see what it looked like. This shows the capping of clay underneath topsoil, and how the edge of the old brick pit slopes up quite sharply (on the right hand side) and how the seam is sandwiched between the cap and the clay base.
Below: Close up view of the seam. Spot the half-dozen bottles and jars sticking out of the side in this one small section alone.
11th December.
Weather (and water) getting colder. This was under a thicker cap than usual, and with the seam 100% under water. We started to get problems with tree roots here (a taste of things to come). This hole was dreadful to start with, but got better.
By this stage the entire tip between this hole and the trees at the far left had been systematically dug out. We then returned to near our first holes and started working in the opposite direction (towards the right of this photo).
This hole produced our only whole Warner's Safe Cure from the tip: a pint size amber bottle that Darren found floating around behind him while I was taking a break, and which must have popped up out of the seam without us noticing.
Below: Some of the keepers from this hole (watch the video here): A nice slab sealed flagon from Boston (Robinson & Smith / Spirit Merchants / Boston), three gingers, a large Gainsboro porter (F & G Gamble), a codd and a few beers.
Our last two days digging on the site in 2005 were freezing...
On one day we dug our first hole right in among the trees. There was ice on the pond by this time, and it was so cold that the water in the hole started to freeze into a kind of slush when we stopped for a break. I got fed up with it pretty quickly, but Darren kept going. No idea how he did it. Here he is, frozen pond and all. The bit of ground about 18” behind him has a story to tell, although we didn’t find that out until September 2006.
Having learned that freezing liquid mud and digging don’t mix we then spent a few days trenching along the top of the bank, to make sure we had not missed any tail-ends of stuff from earlier holes where we might not have chased the seam absolutely all the way up.
This produced almost no keepers at all (in most places we found nothing), but did feed our tame robin, who spent a lot of time dodging flying soil to snatch worms from the spoil heaps.
Below: A bit chilly. Photo taken on the way home on our last days digging of 2005. The temperature didn’t get above minus 4 all day.
THE HOME STRAIGHT: 2006
High water levels and cold weather meant that the next time we went digging at Brickyard Lane wasn’t until four months later, after spring had arrived. We spent the January to April finishing off the frustrating little Market Rasen site already mentioned, and we were getting desperate to dig a decent site again. A problem was that, although the weather was warmer, the water level at the Brickyard was more than a foot higher than it had been in December. We spent part of a day in April tidying up and re-seeding the areas already dug, as required by our permission.
Above: The area we dug in 2005, previously a mass of old illegal holes and spoil heaps, now levelled out but not yet reseeded (there was no turf to replace on the slope as it was nothing but willow herb and stinging nettles before we dug it, but on the flat areas at the top of the slope the turf was good, and settled back very well). The water is very high in this photo.
We had to repeat this kind of tidying up in the trees, but there it was more challenging as the bank itself had been deeply undermined in many places by the illegal diggers, and was also a mass of tree roots. It took forever.
But back to the digging. In 2006 we dug the remaining areas. We started off in the pond itself, in the shallowest area, because everywhere else the seam would be too far under water until the weather dried up. This area turned up yet more gingers (Sanderson, and Davies, both of Gainsborough), and a previously unrecorded slip glazed porter-type bottle impressed "E*Lansdall / Gainsboro". A bit of research revealed that Lansdall had been a chemist and druggist in Gainsboro in the 1830s.
The pond edge outside the trees, once we got around to digging it, was very disappointing. Several times we got two or three feet down only to find old plastic bottles or digging gloves. It turned out that this whole area had been tided up by the landowner, who hired a machine back in the mid 90s after a period of illegal digging left it in a real mess. The machine had rebuilt the edge of the pond by scooping up the bottom and heaping it along the side. This mixed up modern tins and plastic with old tip contents, clay, and black pond-bottom sludge, and meant it was impossible for us to be sure, in 2006, where the original pond edge had been. We dug the whole length over about four weekends anyway, just to be sure, although it turned out to be a bit of a waste of time.
Part of the pond edge before digging. Nice weather, but high water level.
Half way through digging the same spot. Big clumps of grass on the right were cut and put to one side to help restore the bank later on. About 2 minutes after I took this photo Darren found an old digging glove 3 feet down. That explains why we found zilch, nada, nothing, nowt, in this hole. The spot under the spoil heap had been dug by us last autumn, and it produced loads of good stuff. Luckily for us the illegal diggers had only seriously dug the pond edge.
The same spot after filling in and rebuilding the bank. With practice it got easier, but to start with it was a bit of a struggle doing this properly. Note Darren modelling the latest in cutting edge designer gear.
And so into the trees. This (below) is what the pond edge in the trees was generally like before we dug it. We had to leave this area looking smart and tidy, which was a bit of a challenge since the top 6” was 60% bricks and 20% tree roots, and the next three feet weren’t much better. Still, we eventually found lots of undug seam.
The water was still deep at this time so digging was slow work (watch the video here), especially when we couldn’t keep the hole separate from the pond so bailing it out wasn’t possible. Spot the handle of the digging fork in the picture below:
By June the water level had fallen back to where it had been the previous year, making the digging a lot easier. One of the highlights of this area was the hole we put down next to the wet hole we had dug in freezing weather the previous December.
Below: Capping more or less removed from one of our last holes on the site, in the trees next to The Ice Hole. The flat area in this hole is at the same level as the pond. Underneath is about a foot of clay, on top of 18” to 2 feet of seam.
By this time we had perfected our digging technique: By keeping an embankment between the hole and the pond whenever possible, and bailing with two buckets every ten or fifteen minutes, we could keep the water level two feet or more below the level in the pond. This allowed us to see at least part of what we were doing for at least part of the time. Digging into the sides, which was the only way to get at some parts of this tip, would have been impossible otherwise.
Once the capping was off we went straight down into crunchy undug seam about 2 feet thick. Bottles started popping up left, right, and centre straight away. A Harrison 10oz codd was sticking out of the wall at one point, so close to an earlier hole that it must have been missed by an inch at the most. A small hoard of (previously uncommon) dark green Spink Brothers half pint beers turned up, and then Darren pulled out a huge slip glazed porter. Unfortunately no amount of washing and rubbing would make any writing appear on it. Caving under the sides, Darren brought a Davies GB up on the end of his fork (hearts missed a beat until we knew it wasn’t an Economic).
At this time I was going under the far corner, trying to find the edge of another of our old holes. I was kneeling down in a foot of mud, a 3 foot overhang of roots above my head, when I noticed the base of something large, round, and made of stoneware half way up the side of the hole, surrounded by bricks and roots. Ah-ha! Slab sealed flagon here we come!
Nope. Feeling around it, it was short and fat with a raised decorative band around the base, and three funny little peg-like feet underneath. Hmmm. I had no idea what it was, although Darren guessed exactly. At least half an hour of struggling later (or from Darrens point of view half an hour of ‘spectator sport’) I pulled out …….. ta daaahh!
A salt glazed water filter in almost perfect condition. Probably made at one of the Lambeth potteries some time in the 1850s, 60s or 70s, with a huge decorative sprig on the side proclaiming it to be "F H DANCHELL’S PATENT", Supplied by "THE LONDON AND GENERAL WATER PURIFYING COMPANY LIMITED", all below an impressive royal coat of arms (see BBR magazine No102, page 42, for a photograph of a smaller variant without Danchell’s name). We were both more than a little surprised it came out whole. After all, how often does something like this (it’s not only large, but also quite thinly potted) not only get thrown out while still in good condition, but survive being thrown in the bin and then the dust cart, then being trundled in a heap of rubbish along miles of road, going through the griddle at the pit for ash removal, and getting thrown onto the tip?
It looks like a Stephen Green product, but what is the date of the patent??? Danchell (who holds a minor place in the history of medicine at the time the ‘germ theory’ of disease was gradually gaining acceptance) patented another device, a kit for testing water quality, which was not manufactured until 1867 at the earliest. Maybe Danchell’s water filter patent was significantly earlier, as 1867 is too late for Stephen Green, who ended his involvement in the pottery making business in around 1858 - 1860.
THE END.
Our last dig on the site was a few weeks later. We had spent several weekends scratching around in areas we had previously ignored because they were either too horrible to contemplate (deep under water) or had obviously been absolutely heavily dug by the illegal diggers. The possibility of another East Brothers or Economic was the only thing that kept us going back, along with the more realistic hope of more stoneware porters.
The first day of the last weekend was spent finishing off in the trees. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Digging in roots and bricks again (this is the only time I’ve ever had to use a saw to cut off chunks of capping, as the only way to get through it), but at least we managed to dig down to the bottom of the tip, find the seam, and join up with the two holes we had dug earlier. Total finds worth mentioning were, umm, errr, one slightly chipped John Davies GB.
Not to be discouraged, the next day we spent the morning digging out the last area of pond edge, but got nothing to show for it, not even a beer worth keeping (most of that hole had already been dug by the other diggers). Then, back to the top of the bank outside the trees, to spend a couple of hours finishing off a small area we suspected we had not chased along to the bitter end several months before. This turned out to be a good idea. The 4m x 2m area, only two feet deep, that we turned over produced our only undamaged Beavis patent of the site: a fantastic 10oz John Davies pictorial. Not a bad way to finish.
We then had to spend a day tidying up, as per one of the conditions of the permission. We buried huge amounts of scattered glass and pottery, especially from the shallow parts of the pond, did some last minute levelling, and shored up some bits of the pond sides where the ducks had been up to no good.
The landowner was very happy with our efforts and provided a glowing reference for us to use when trying for permission elsewhere in future.
AFTERWARDS.
Even though it had been an exciting site the digging was mostly pretty horrible, and it was a great relief to finish. It was so much a hard slog through clay capping and heaps of buried bricks and old leather shoes, and especially water, that by the end we were very happy that it was all done.
We concluded the tip dates to almost exactly 1900, and was probably only used for one or two years at the most. Apart from the obvious late throw-outs which were significantly older than everything else in the dump, dated items ranged from 1896 on a broken Sheffield codd, to 1900 on a dated blacking pot, and there were no noticeable differences in the items we found from one end of the tip to the other.
There were some strange things about the tip: only two pot lids, and 3 or 4 bases, turned up the whole time. There were very few small glass inks (although we did get one unusually shaped dark green example), but there were lots of bulk inks, mostly stone but also a few glass. The majority of bottles were drinks bottles, both mineral waters and beers, but with plenty of whiskies and case gins, too. Not a single dolls head was found, broken or whole, although a number of broken metal toys did turn up. There were beer and mineral bottles from all over England, as far afield as Stroud, Canterbury, and Manchester. There were also literally thousands of shoes. This might be explained by the presence of two broken cobblers lasts and some larger pieces of cut leather. Overall it was as though the dump was only from a very small area of Gainsborough (maybe just one or two streets), where there was not much money around but lots of drinking was done, and which included a cobblers shop.
THE FINAL TALLY
Finds for over 40 days of digging were:
Ginger Beers:
• 12 John Davies Gainsboro (champ tt)
• 3 Aldam Marshall Retford (std tt)
• 3 Harrison Gainsboro (champ tt)
• 2 Harrison Gainsboro (std salt glaze impressed)
• 2 Reinecke Grimsby (std white)
• 2 Bardill, Derby & Burton (std tt)
• 1 Economic Supply Co
• 1 East Brothers Louth (champ tt pict)
• 1 Harrison Gainsboro (std tt)
• 1 Alfred Foster Retford (std tt)
• 1 Walton Grimsby (std white pict)
• 1 Bellamy Bros Grimsby (std tt black print)
• 1 Straker Grimsby (champ tt imp)
• 1 Bardill, Derby & Burton (std tt imp)
Others:
• 6 Impressed slip glazed local porters (Including 1 unrecorded E*Lansdall
/ Gainsboro)
• 2 Salt glaze porters (Clemesha, and Dossor, both Hull)
• 4 Hamiltons and round base cylinders
• 100 (approx) local beers (Kept. An unknown number reburied)
• 2 Pot lids (1 red print Circassian Cream, 1 6d Woods)
• 2 Flagons (1 slab sealed)
• 50+ Codds
• 1 Beavis patent codd
• 1 Railway flask (MS&L Rly)
• 1 Prattware pot (‘mending the nets’)
• 1 Warners Safe Cure
• 3 Bird & Fenbys patent mineral water bottles
• 2 Pontiled perfume bottles
Broken / damaged items worth mentioning:
• 1 Economic Supply GBs (necked / chunked but
not smashed):
• 2 Economic Supply GBs (fragments):
• 1 Unrecorded porter, quart size champagne shape, impressed PG at base
(Pashley, Gainsboro)
• 1 Porter, quart size champagne shape, impressed W. Dewick / Gainsboro
(second known example)
• 1 Davies Gainsboro oval transfer GB (second known example)
• 1 Slab sealed porter, J. Shaw, 44 White Friars Gate, Hull
• Lots of slip glazed flagons
• 5 Reinecke codds (pictorial with BLACK or AMBER marble)
• 1 Leigh & Co, Salford, dark olive-amber 6oz codd
• 8 John Davies Beavis patents (Pictorial)
• 1 John Davies hybrids
• 1 Dakins Patent Coffee
• 1 Handysides Blood Food, aqua flask type
• 8 Amber Warners
• 1276 Codds (broken, total).
The 32 GBs to come from the site in one piece. The three pictorials are all in the front row: the all white Walton from Grimsby (chameleon), the two tone East Brothers of Louth (church) and the Economic Supply Co. of Grimsby (albatross and anchor).
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Three of the stoneware porters found. From left to right: Salt glaze ‘Clemesha’; slip glaze 'E C Davies / Gainsboro’; slip glaze ‘Rayner Junr / Ferry’
Some of the heartbreakers. From left to right:
1. Dakins Patent Coffee; 2. Quart capacity porter "W Dewick / Gainsboro" (only the second example known); 3. Tiny piece of an Economic GB; 4. Blue print mini "Patent Preserves" jar; 5. "W. Dossor / Hull" salt glaze porter with Burton Codnor Park pottery mark; 6. Slab sealed porter "J*Shaw / Wine & Spirit*Merchant / 44 White*Friars*Gate / Hull"; 7. Base of hybrid codd "Davies / Gainsboro"; 8. Economic Supply GB minus lip; 9. Handysides Blood Food flask in aqua; 10. J. Bourne EX marked porter (bottlers name missing / illegible); 11. Quart capacity porter "John Slagg / Gainsboro" (First known example); 12. Early style J. Davies GB missing lip / neck (second known example); 13. Quart capacity porter impressed "P. G.", probably for Pashley Gainsborough (First known example); 14. Base of an Economic Supply Co GB.
Others not photographed included several Warners, a cobalt hair restorer from Walworth (The Hyperion Hair Restorer), a very dark amber 6oz Leigh & Co codd from Salford, and numerous smaller pieces of rare local bottles, both stoneware and glass. As is pretty obvious from the finds list and photos, it was really a stoneware tip. Most of the glass was in very bad condition. For example, of the 50 or more unbroken codds, only 3 or 4 were in really good condition.
So there had been a lot of potential for the site, but the reality was nothing like the stories had suggested.
© J. M. Kemp & D. Gray.
