Not a bottle collector myself, but I like that Tilley lamp, that brings back memories of when I was a kid those things put out loads of light, like nothing else I had access to. Memories like being 11 and owning a feeble Duracell torch where the top flipped up and we were all too scared to walk through an abandoned railway tunnel with that puny little light (long and curved so totally dark as you got in), we all got scared and ran out again... until the mighty Tilley was borrowed then it was all different.
Well they do appreciate my poor non RAW images on the bottle forum.Not content with his bottle forum the OR's bottles are creeping into caves! Brace yourselves!
I have three but staying with me. I am very old so who knows when they might come back on the market. ( They come up on auction quite regularly )Eyup TOR do you have any stone glazed Bellarmine Bartmann bottle(s) up for grabs cos I really want one, please! Will pay some squids if you do.
Oddly enough, I was looking at those artefacts today.I find stuff all the time, underground and outdoors, but I spend half my life looking at the floor, so it's not surprising. One the best was finding the remains of an 18th century waistcoat in Speedwell Cavern - or at least the buttons, as there wasn't much else left. This was in Pit Top Passage, high above the Bottomless Pit. Their layout showed that the waistcoat had been taken off and laid on a low wall of deads, and the owner clearly forgot about it - though why he never went back to fetch it remains a mystery, and most of the fabric had since rotted away. Initially I thought it could have been left behind by James Puttrell and friends, who visited the passage in 1921, but we had the fabric tested and it was maroon-dyed wool, and at least 200 years old. AR cleaned up one of the buttons back to its original shiny silvery (tinned) surface, and they are now in the artefacts cabinet in the showcave shop, along with a pick-head I found in the Pit Props Series. There's an article in 'Observations and Discoveries' in the PDMHS Newsletter 151 with more detail.
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Is that really a kibble hook? It looks just like a marine or general purpose grapple hook.Several of us crawled over a hand-grenade below a shallow air-shaft on a Derbyshire Sough a few years ago, before it was spotted, with the pin-side buried in mud, so we had no idea if it was 'live' or not. That was disposed of pretty sharpish.
Below are some more artefacts found buried in collapse spoil during the Longcliffe shaft excavation - a plumb bob, weighing exactly one pound, a poll-pick (expertly cleaned-up by AR), and a three-pronged kibble-hook.
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Is that really a kibble hook? It looks just like a marine or general purpose grapple hook.