buried treasure

[Nicos]

As Lesley Jay finds pottery and I find glass in our soil , I wondered if anyone has found anything interesting whilst digging (or knows of someone who has!)? The guy in the plot next to ours found a couple of clay pipes on his! Smoking - not drainage!!! Some of you must live on battle sites etc.

[nick the grief]

I do battle on my plot every year, mainly Slugs & Weeds

At my folks old house we unearthed a nice collection of old pop bottles, you know the sort with marbles in.

Don't remember what happened to them

[Jaxom]

My Father-in-law unearthed a roman coin in his garden in Glasgow. How it got there I have no idea but when my Mother-in-law died a few years ago we took it to the museum to find out more about it. What a shock we had! It turns out that there are thousands of these coins turning up in Britain all the time and as a result worth very little at all.
Some times it is nice though to own something as old as the coin and not feel as thought it has to be treated with kid gloves or locked away. To hold it in your hand and try to picture the person who last held it before losing it. Was it a Roman soldier or a Celt dressed in little more than woad and a battle cry?
Jax

[sewer rat]

As some of you may be aware, I spend a lot of my working life down various holes, ditches, trenches etc and have come across may wonderful and not so wonderful things - there are the usual - old bottles, both glass and clay, clay pipes (smoking) bits of metal, old horseshoes for Clydesdales (would be Shires if I was in England) and some not so usual - old dagger (believed to be Jacobean) and a dead horse (don't ask).
Whilst digging out a rockery which was in the way of where I wanted my greenhouse, I uncovered the skeletons of three cats - think they has been feeding the bindweed!
Rat

[sewer rat]

Roman Coin

Jax
The Roman Empire stretched as far as Perthshire and they built a poor man's Hadrians Wall (wood and turf) between Glasgow and Edinburgh - The Antonine Wall - so that may explain why it was found in a Glasgow garden
Rat

[JennieAtkinson]

I have a spooky but interesting tale ........ We live in an Old Manse and whilst digging out an extremely old compost heap in 2002 (which had old coffee jars and heaven knows what else in it) I came across a part of a headstone (left hand side). Could just make out the name of Duncan, lost at sea 31 March in Iceland. Frightened the life out of me, especially as OH was away at the time. Slept that night with all the lights on!

Then in 2004, digging in another part of the garden I found the right side, which gave me the surname, name of the boat and the year. It was a perfect match. The local history group have done some work on it and the boat did sink, but the gentleman wasn't named as crew - all we can surmise is that he must have turned up.

I don't dig quite as deep as I used to ..... but I have a new patch of garden to dig over soon - might get some chaps in to do it while I'm at work .... think I would prefer to live on an old battle site

[Cab]

My mums family were from Wallsend. Everyone in Wallsend used to dig up scraps of Roman pot, didn't think anything of it. My grandfather was lucky enough to find a small roman pot, intact except for the chip he took out with the spade, so he took it home, cleaned it and put it on the mantlepiece.

My mum, some time when she was a tiny sprog in the late '30s, managed to knock it off and break it.

So they threw it away

[Geordie]

Digging the garden of a house some years ago I unearthed an engine, 3 wheels, bumper, rear seat, 2 shocks with springs and an exhaust....all from (I think) a MK 1 Escort.
What was a 1/2 day job lasted days and the crater looked like a meteor crash!

[nick the grief]

On the subject of Romans, we have the site of a roman pottery about 500yds up the road from me but I've never found a thing! As the house was built in 1898 you expect to get something but no not even a sewer pipe let alone a smoking one

[mandyballantyne]

Please don't mention Roman's!

We have been clearing an old area of ground with the intention of a garden and small plot but have found a rather large area of something stone!

The ground has never had a garden or a house on it before, however there is a roman wall less than a mile from here and lots of remains of forts.....

The way the land lies it looks like I have something that I don't need and possibly no garden to look forward to!!

We have been digging in vitual darkness for an hour each night so we will see what daylight brings on Saturday??

[sewer rat]

Mandy
The Roman Wall you speak of was the Antonine Wall and was primarily wood and turf construction, though possibly the forts were more permanent structures. Me, I'd keep shtoom and tell nobody - unless I found something I thought might be valuable !
Rat

[Nicos]

And then I wouldn't even tell him!!! good luck Ps ...can I come and visit if you need any further help?????

[mandyballantyne]

Still digging finding lots of stone deep down, maybe I should just stop and think about planting over it quick!

[sewer rat]

Mandy
I think if I were you, I would now seriously be considering raised beds !!
Rat

[Nicos]

Are you sure you've not hit bedrock???