[WebSiteEvo]

I just thought I would share one of my finds from digging over my vegetable patch and I wondered what else people have found.

I appear to have found a decorated clay pipe with the word dubin on it. After a little research I have found they date back to 1901 and where commonly smoked by Irish Immigrants.



A similar pipe was found in York by the York Archaeological Trust:

Hungate was a poor part of town in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The slum housing, unhealthy sanitation and high number of public houses was highlighted in a study of poverty in York by Seebohm Rowntree in 1901. Amongst the Hungate inhabitants was a significant proportion of Irish immigrants who had been coming to the city since the 1840s to work on the canals, railways and in the cultivation of chicory.

One recent find from the excavations at Hungate gives us a glimpse of this Irish community. The decorated bowl of a clay pipe which shows the Irish harp and the words ERIN was found in one of the backyards. Dr Peter Davey of Liverpool University has identified it as the product of the well-established Pollock pipeworks in Manchester, where it was made somewhere between 1901 and 1911. The type, known as Erin Cutty, was particularly popular with Irish immigrants who had settled in Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow.

In Rowntree's report on York he comments that 'it is a common sight to see the women in the Irish quarter sitting on the kerbstones outside their cottages smoking clay pipes'. Was this one of those pipes? Perhaps a quiet smoke from an Erin Cutty pipe helped to evoke old memories of the Emerald Isle. A few shreds of tobacco from the last smoke still survived inside the bowl.

I have also found broken pottery and beer bottles which may have data as far back as 1845 when the land was used to keep pigs and an allotment by Irish farm workers!

150 years ago someone could of been digging up their potatoes in exactly the same spot as me smoking their pipe.

[Hawthorne]

I've also found a couple of bits of pipe stem - no bowl so I can't tell how old they are.

My son was thrilled and immediately decided he wanted to be an archeologist - maybe I should point him to an undug patch and say that all the best stuff's likely to be a couple of feet down

[Ruby Red]

Thats brilliant. They were originally bought very cheaply and many were broken due to their fragility. I havent an allotment but while renovating our house we have found several little stoneware ink pots (from the chapel next door that had a sunday school), a couple of cod bottles without the marble, a few medicinal bottles that were made of thin glass and the top of them were crimped together. Apparently they were used by farmers and made so the top of the bottle could be knocked off cleanly so giving the medicine was easier if you were holding the beast. Also we dug up a whole cows skull.!! Lots of home made nails as well. And my favourite was an old dogs collar. I assume over the years the body had be reclaimed by the earth. :cry:

[GreenOwl]

Stones, stones, stones and a plastic toy soldier...... did I mention the stones?

[Trillium]

I've found the same as GreenOwl, and lots of rusty spike nails.

[DD.]

I found a pink plastic tag with just the number "42" on.

The answer to.........

[Blue fingers]

Do I get any points for the head off a toothbrush at all?

What do you mean no?

OK I'll get me coat..................

[gobs]

All sorts, but mostly glass and glass....

[jack russell]

A huge moler tooth this is far larger than any human tooth some very old rusty keys and a child's sandal made from leather i will get a photo of them and put them up here

[muddifoot]

something is going haywire -I keep losing my replys--

I only found one thing and that was one of the seven dwarfs-  I gave it to alfie, Alex's grandson.  I don't think he was to impressed-  but I supose him being 3 and me being a bit older its more my era than his.  By the way it was about an inch high  with pretty good colour for being buried so long.

[lincspoacher]

The problem with Lincoln is that if you stick  a spade in the ground anywhere in the city boundary, you'll hit a dead roman on the head. So when people find stuff, they keep quiet, else you get 20 spotty archeology students digging up your plot of land for two years.

[compostqueen]

clay pipe stems, that's the lot unfortunately

[Sharon]

I have literally hundreds of bits of clay pipe in my allotment.  Also a lot of old bones, Roman and Iron Age pot and worked flints. My allotment is at the bottom of a hill. Just up from it is the town cemetery. From there to the top of the hill and all along the ridge of the hill have been found burials from the bronze age to Saxon.
It's good soil  

[Aunt Sally]

Lots of bits of clay pipe stems too.  Broken glass bottles (very old thick glass) and loads of whole (and bits) of very eroded oyster shells.

[WirralWally]

I've dug up all sorts of pottery, medallions, brooches etc.

One piece that I can't positively identify is a Royal Artillery badge.

It is similar to that in the opening picture on THIS SITE  except that the crown is rounded similar to that in the second picture.
(I'm not sure if the rounded crown is the King's or Queen's).
It's the pic with UBIQUE at the top, and QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT below.

The wheel in the centre of the badge revolves.

There must be something about it that identifies which nationality it actually belongs to.
There's a possibility that it could be from any of the Commonwealth countries, because my land is very close to a second world war transhipment area.