Tag Archives: Post-medieval

Find of The Month – August

This month’s find might not look like much. It is a pretty run-of-the-mill ‘willow pattern’ plate, and you probably noticed it’s also broken. So what makes it so special? Well, we’re currently writing up what we hope will be our first major monograph, on a post-medieval cemetery in Brentford, West London. This plate, along with another similar one, a pewter plate and a blue and white tin-glazed cup were all found in graves.

It is possible that these vessels contained salt, believed to provide protection and ward off decay, but we don’t really know for sure. Rare examples of plates or saucers are known from other burials in London and from sites further afield, for example at St. Mary’s Church (Leicester), St. Peter’s Church (Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire) and at St. Nicholas’s Church (Wetwang, East Yorkshire).

So this plate is special, not because of what we know about it, but because of what we don’t. The person with whom this was buried died less than 200 years ago, and yet already the reasons for this tradition have been lost.

Find of the Month, March – Soda Water Torpedo Bottle

By Cova Escandon (Project Supervisor Archives)

The find of the month for March is a Lee and Green Ltd. torpedo bottle. It is made of plain glass and you can read on its body ‘Sleaford’ and ‘Spalding’.

Lee and Green Ltd. Torpedo Bottle

Arthur Green and Ranyard Lee opened an aerated water bottling factory in Spalding in 1885. The factory was located on Albion St. and built by John Richard Carter in 1824. It was sold in 1846 to Henry Bugg the Younger and William Henry Bugg. A few years later, the premises were used temporarily as a guano store, before being sold to Lee and Green. They also had factories in Sleaford, Bourne, Boston and Skegness.

The first ‘torpedo bottles’ appeared at the end of the 18^th Century as a solution to the problem of containing gas in glass bottles. At this time, glass bottles were not strong enough to contain the gas so they would often explode. Glass capable to contain the gas was very expensive, so it was reserved for luxurious liquids such as champagne. Cheaper drinks like ginger beer were contained in stoneware bottles. The torpedo shape would stop any air leaking as it prevented the bottle from being stood up, keeping the cork moist as a result of being in contact with the soda, so it wouldn’t shrink (something still done today with other drinks such as wine). Pouring the drink would also be easier and it would be better adapted for packing carriage. It did present advantages for the merchant and the consumer too as the consumer would have to finish the drink before putting down the bottle! The bottles were also easy to transport via boat on flat shelves with holes on them so they wouldn’t fall over when the ship moved.

1914 marks the end of the torpedo bottle era. They are no longer necessary as they are replaced by Malenstrone’s 1901 patent that allows normal shaped bottles to contain gas.

‘The Story of Lee and Green’ Exhibition is currently on display at Sleaford Museum.

The Story of Lee & Green

Pineapples and Pteridomania!

By Dominika Czop, Project Archaeologist

Last week I was sent on an archaeological adventure in beautiful Shropshire. I accompanied our new Senior Project Officer, Craig. Our task was to investigate what is hidden under the ground next to the walled garden in Weston Park. We discovered foundations of a pinery-vinery!

I hope everyone likes pineapples because pinery-vinery was a greenhouse for pineapples. Pineapples were first grown in the Netherlands, and British gardeners learnt the art of growing this exotic fruit from the Dutch. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the first British grown pineapples were cultivated by a Dutch gardener, Henry Telende, who worked in Sir Matthew Decker’s Pembroke Villa in Richmond. As a fruit that is very expensive and difficult to grow in northern climates, pineapple, like other exotic plants, became a symbol of wealth and status. Unlike today when we can buy one at any time, only two hundred years ago people rented pineapples to show off to their guest or even send them to the king or queen as a royal gift!

The majestic pineapple, once available for hire

Unlike citrus fruit, which could be grown in orangeries, pineapples require constant heat as they grow all year round. Since the 17^th century heated greenhouses were used in Britain. Hot air flues inside cavity walls allowed heating of entire length of the garden wall. Furnaces that provided the heat for the walls can be seen along the southern wall of the Walled Garden in Weston Park. Unfortunately furnaces required constant attention – they had to be supplied with fuel, produced soot, which could block the hot air flues and created danger of fire. Fumes from the furnaces also damaged or killed the plants in greenhouses. Different techniques of growing pineapples and providing heat inside of the greenhouses developed during the 18^th and 19^th century. First pineapples were grown in tan pits and then moved to heated hothouses to mature. James Justice described his success in growing pineapples in 1728 at his estate in Crichton, Scotland. He combined tanners’ pits and greenhouse into one stage of growing and maturing pineapples. The pineapple pots were placed in a pit filled with layers of pebbles, manure and tanners’ bark, which provided a source of stable heat for few months.

Pinery-vinery wall

The use of pinery-vinery was proposed by Thomas Hitt in 1757. It had a dual function of growing pineapples and grapes. Pineapples were grown in a greenhouse on the south side of the heated wall and grapes grew on the north side inside of the walled garden. Unfortunately growing pineapples and grapes together required a lot of effort and was very expensive, therefore it was later abandoned. Presence of arches in the lower part of the pinery wall in Weston Park indicates that the vines were planted there and they could grow inside of the greenhouse as well as the other side of the heated wall. This early 19^th century invention also allowed greater space for the roots of the vine. Nails inserted between the bricks allowed the vines to spread across the whole surface of the wall.

Greenhouses became more popular in Britain after the invention of the Wardian case in 1829 and abolition of the glass tax in 1845.This new development led to the fern craze (Pteridomania!) in Britain. Availability of cheap glass and invention of well sealed greenhouses allowed growing of tropical plants on a larger scale, even in the fumes filled London. Despite the popularity of the heated greenhouses and success of the pineapple growing, this type of horticulture was abandoned with the arrival of imported exotic fruit.

Today anyone interested in past horticulture and pineries can visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan and Tatton Park or the Pineapple Summerhouse at Dunmore. There are also other places which still have standing structures associated with pineapple growing, and perhaps in future they will be restored to bring crops of British grown pineapples!

Find of the month: bricks need love too

I have been asked to write a post about January’s exciting Find of the Month, which is a small collection of bricks taken from one of our recent sites. I’m guessing they have been chosen as find of the month not because they’re nicer than anything else we found in January, but in order to give me a chance to write a follow up to my previous blog post about post-medieval archaeology.

Hand moulded 18th-19th century brick

The bricks in question cover a range of dates from the late 18th to the mid 20th century and so the techniques used for making the bricks change from hand moulding to machine pressing. This alone can be a good indicator of the date of brick structures, as machine moulded brick came to predominate in the second half of the 19th century. Among hand moulded bricks, the size of the brick can sometimes be helpful in suggesting how old the brick might be. For example, a brick tax was imposed in Britain in 1784, but was charged on the number of bricks, rather than by weight. The natural response of the brickmakers was to make larger bricks, charge more for them, and pay as little tax as possible! There is a tendency for hand pressed bricks to increase in size from the introduction of the brick tax until its repeal in 1850.

Dating of machine pressed bricks is of course helped by the fact that they are often stamped with the name of the manufacturer. Historical research into the brickworks itself, and the stamps used at different periods of its existence, can be used to indicate when and where the bricks were produced.

Handmade tapered header brick

Information can also be gleaned from the forms of bricks found on site. This is a handmade tapered header brick, a type of brick used in the construction of vaulted structures. Bricks like this would be an unusual find in a domestic context, and normally indicate the presence of structures such as drainage culverts or flues associated with industrial activity.

So, whilst it’s easy for all the prehistorians here to laugh at those of us who appreciate bricks, on a complex, multi-phase industrial site the bricks used in the construction of the buildings can be an invaluable resource, at least as important as all their pots and stones!

Why post-medieval archaeology matters (to some of us)

As archaeologists, our job is to study the past through the analysis of material culture. But how far into the past does something have to be to warrant the attention of archaeology? Occasionally in the course of our work it is possible to encounter the view that whilst the significance of remains of the distant past is appreciated, the more recent the period being dealt with, the more people become baffled the remains are considered to merit study. This attitude is of course understandable – prehistoric, Roman and medieval sites have little or no documentary evidence relating to them, they do not appear on maps or photographs and very often their very existence is unknown until they are revealed by archaeologists. It is easy to assume that, for more recent sites, the historical record “tells us all we need to know”.

However, it must be remembered that in the future even the present will be really, really old. With our unprecedented appreciation of the value of heritage, I think that we must seize the opportunity to make sure that we have as full a record as possible of significant archaeological remains of more recent times, especially given that in some areas such sites are disappearing at an alarming rate.

In this post, then, I’ll (Al) give a couple of examples where I think that the archaeological study of more recent sites has proven its worth. I know not everyone will be convinced….

Figure 1: Women working in engineering, Manchester, 1916

Many years ago I carried out an evaluation on the site of an engineering works in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which had originated as part of the Gateshead Iron Works, founded by William Hawks in the 18th century. One of the trenches was targeted on an outbuilding identified on OS mapping as a fairly late addition to the site – a building which turned out to be a toilet block. So far, so very unglamorous. During post excavation, a search of building control documentation revealed that the toilets had been added to the works in 1917. At first this puzzled me. Why, with the most destructive war in human history in full flow in Europe, would an engineering works undoubtedly running at full capacity on Ministry of Defence contracts build a new toilet block, of all things? It occurred to me at that point that there was no evidence in the ground for a urinal, just individual cubicles, and a possible interpretation emerged.

It seems possible that the new toilets became a necessity at that time due to the replacement of the traditionally male workforce with women, as more and more men were conscripted into the armed forces. The work done by women during the First World War is often presented as a factor in the softening of the attitude of the powers that be to the idea of granting women suffrage, although the long struggle that it took to achieve this should not be dismissed. Although the interpretation is not certain, to me it provides an example of how archaeological and documentary evidence can be combined to add to understanding of the social history of not only the specific site, but the region and nation as a whole.

From another metalworking site on Tyneside, that of Spencer’s Steelworks in Newburn, there is further example of how archaeology can add to our understanding of the development of the site. Documentary records tell us that the works, which was founded in the early 19th century, expanded in the 1870s as new plant for bulk steel production was installed. Records have not survived, however, detailing the construction methods and materials used in this fairly late expansion. Archaeology revealed remains of some of the first commercially viable Siemen’s regenerative steel furnaces in England. Interestingly, it also revealed that the construction of the furnaces had necessitated the import of refractory bricks from Glenboig, near Glasgow.

Figure 2: Example of a Glenboig firebrick, because there had to be a brick…………

At this time the north east coalfield had many firebrick works, producing products which were nationally renowned, along with those from around Stourbridge. Indeed, many firebricks from West Durham brickworks were used at Spencer’s – unsurprisingly, as the freight charges would have been minimal. So, what the archaeology suggested was that, despite their excellent reputation, local refractory bricks were still not suitable for lining Siemens furnaces. The Glenboig brickworks, close to Coatbridge where Siemens plant had been built in the late 1860s, seem to have developed bricks especially for this task, and historical evidence shows that they made it a selling point. So the investigation of a site in Newburn informs us not only about industry there, but also about related industry in Scotland.

Although there’s only space to provide a couple of examples, I hope that I have manage to express why I believe that it is important to treat archaeology of more recent times as a significant and diminishing resource. The work AAL does continues to build our understanding of the post-medieval and modern eras, with recent work on the Crown Brewery and maltings in Lincoln, communal air-raid shelters from the Second World War in Sunderland, and this…

Figure 3: A lovely example of a Royal Observer Corps monitoring post dating from the Cold War period.

Image sources:

Figure 1: American Machinist, vol 44, issue 25, page 1060 via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WW1_Churchills_Pendleton_women_at_work_1916.png
Figure 2: Image reproduced with Creative Commons License from https://www.flickr.com/photos/nottsexminer/6824143320
Figure 3: AAL’s archive