Do you ever find treasure underground?

[The Old Ruminator]

See bottle here above.

 

[pwhole]

This bottle was retrieved from the shaft excavation at Longcliffe Mine, buried beneath at least 10m of solid rocks, 20m down the shaft, and completely undamaged, with the top on and lemonade still inside. It was from Whittaker's of Matlock Bath, and they used to have a pop shop near the Colour Works with a back entrance that led into Long Tor Grotto, then a showcave controlled by them. The shaft was still open in 1944, but I believe the Whittaker's shop was open until the late 50s - we don't have a date for the shaft run-in, but definitely pre-1961. How it ended up buried under 10m of deads is unknown.

Ah - more (accurate) info here: https://www.andrewsgen.com/matlock/pix/matlockdale_daleroad_popworks.htm

There'll be more bottle tales in the next Derbyshire Caver

 

[AR]

I found one pretty much identical to that when clearing a blockage in a mineshaft on Taddington Moor, there was a load of rubbish sat on top of the petrol tank from an old car with the intact bottle among it.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Embossed bottles from the 1850's and earlier are very rare. Mostly they fetch many hundreds of pounds and in certain cases many thousands. There has been a huge surge in early bottle prices in the last few years here in the UK and also America and Australia. Sadly the Bath bottle above is not quite in that league. I suppose old bottles are some of the most likely items to find in caves, infilled depressions and mines. Anyone wishing to see realisations follow this auction due in May.

 

[Cantclimbtom]

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.

 

[mrodoc]

Not content with his bottle forum the OR's bottles are creeping into caves! Brace yourselves!

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Not content with his bottle forum the OR's bottles are creeping into caves! Brace yourselves!

Well they do appreciate my poor non RAW images on the bottle forum.

 

[mrodoc]

You cannot post RAW images. They contain the basic data enabling one to manipulate the image without destroying it.

 

[cap n chris]

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.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

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.

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 )

 

[david3392]

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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Oddly enough, I was looking at those artefacts today.

 

[pwhole]

Aw, that's cool! Hahah - well, it was definitely better putting them in there than here!

 

[The Old Ruminator]

My oddest find down a deep unexplored rift at Milverton, Somerset was a working Thompson 1922 sub machine gun. It was confiscated.

 

[mikem]

Bomb mine on mendip was full of mortar shells, apparently the shaft wasn't quite the same after bomb squad dealt with it...

 

[pwhole]

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.

 

[Dickie]

There's a midden in Ashford Black Marble mine that has (had?) a wooden clog sole, obviously the clogs had fallen apart. The sad thing is that it was only about six inches long - child labour...

 

[Flotsam]

I

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.

 

[Pegasus]

It's ridiculous how much I am enjoying this thread. It's the word 'treasure' and finding it....am a bit disappointed no one has posted a photo of a treasure chest full of gold coins they found underground 😁

 

[pwhole]

Is that really a kibble hook? It looks just like a marine or general purpose grapple hook.

It could well be, though it was very flaky iron, so old. And it was buried around 15m down in the shaft spoil, so not caver gear - unless Trevor Ford and pals were using one as a hopeful belay for their rope ladders in 1943 when it was still open - dunno. The shaft isn't straight, and there are huge rope grooves on every overhanging wall, so we know they did haul from it - I had to assume, without any other evidence, that it was used for hauling something.

 

[mrodoc]

Not treasure but slightly puzzling. We are excavating around a mine on the Quantock Hills probably about 5 miles from the coast as the crow flies. We have just been digging a pit about 50 metres from the mine shaft below the engine house and about 2 m below the base have found much broken pottery and, rather more surprising, numerous small limpet shells. Now these are two a penny in coastal middens but strange to find them on top of a hill in a wood! Any thoughts? People do eat limpets although God knows why. They are a menu item in Portugal and parts of Spain! Did the former mine workers eat them I wonder. Thought they would be eating something more substantial. The function of the pit is a bit of a mystery as the base seems to be solid rock. We are wondering if it was a pond for storing water for the engine house boiler nearby. Perhaps I need to post this on the mining forum but it doesn't pigeon hole well does it?