View Full Version : Time Team types and Metal Detectives are all ...
Fallout
26-09-12, 07:39 PM
... gimps, aren't they? I mean let's face it, walking up and down a field all day waving a stick? Not exactly arousing. And then when you watch Time Team and see Baldrick, a man synonymous with total and utter repugnant failure, all animated because that slab of grey stone that has taken them 4 weeks to uncover in the pising raining has been proven to be the poo step in a latrine in an ancient village .... not exactly edge of your seat action, is it?
So why is it that when I was digging a moat in my garden today, and I happened upon an old mortar (not the bang bang type, but the squish squash my seeds are nicely crushed type), it was exciting! Suddenly this well defined moat plan became a hack and slash affair as I hurried to find the whole Indian kitchen set. Alas, I didn't find anything else except an old German label proclaiming "Achtung" and a pair of children safety scissors (which I didn't run with), but still it got me thinking ... what wonders do we all have in our back garden?! Underneath my lawn, could there be some ancient jewellery, or the holy grail ... a velocorapter complete with cape?
I think tomorrow I'll just have to continue with digging the moat as planned, but for a short time I thought about retraining as an archaeologist or someone else who digs big holes.
Anyone else found anything cool while building home defences?
Not sure if you saw the original thread on Petrolheads (http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=141&t=543304&i=0), however this has to be the ultimate DIY garden archaeology thread/blog (http://gardenbunker.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/background.html)
Warning - do not open the link unless you have a lot of time to spare - it is an addictive tale, the original thread on Petrolheads eventually ran to 231 pages!
Fallout i fear that your house may have been built on a local landfill site.
Fallout
26-09-12, 08:12 PM
Not sure if you saw the original thread on Petrolheads (http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=141&t=543304&i=0), however this has to be the ultimate DIY garden archaeology thread/blog (http://gardenbunker.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/background.html)
Warning - do not open the link unless you have a lot of time to spare - it is an addictive tale, the original thread on Petrolheads eventually ran to 231 pages!
That's epic. Not seen it before and insanely jealous of having such a thing to uncover. It's a shame there were no mercs in there or nazi gold, but guns will do! :)
Fallout i fear that your house may have been built on a local landfill site.
Disappointingly, this area was a forest until developed in the 60s. Even landfill would give me more to dig for! :(
dizzyblonde
26-09-12, 09:23 PM
A cannon ball.....or was it a shot put?
Either way, it was round and heavy.
The interesting part, is my house is behind what used to be the barracks, training grounds, head quarters for the original Duke of Wellingtons regiment.
When they excavated the footy pitch for the new houses being built it was riddled with lead, and they had to shift truck loads of muck out, and bring new stuff in.
Obviously a lot of lead shot and target practice, exercised there!
BanannaMan
27-09-12, 01:44 AM
Not much to find here in the new world.
Prior to 1976, when my house was built, the property was forest land forever.
Treasure found here with metal detectors is mostly limited to finding coins and jewlery lost by tourists in the sand at the beach.
I might well be showing myself to be a stupid american by asking this but I must ask,
Are you seriously digging a moat for home defences???
Against???
Wet or dry??
I'd think a shotgun would be more effective and a lot less work.
Fallout
27-09-12, 06:49 AM
I might well be showing myself to be a stupid american by asking this but I must ask,
Are you seriously digging a moat for home defences???
Against???
Wet or dry??
I'd think a shotgun would be more effective and a lot less work.
I could perhaps be digging a footing trench for garden sleepers, but until my sleepers are delivered, it's a moat! :D
Spank86
27-09-12, 07:06 AM
.
I might well be showing myself to be a stupid american by asking this but I must ask,
Are you seriously digging a moat for home defences???
Against???
Wet or dry??
.
Didn't anyone tell you?
An English mans home is his castle. :D
tactcom7
27-09-12, 07:18 AM
Are you going to be gracing us with some pictures of your exploits or have i misses that bit?
I found a musket ball in the old garden, took it to the museum and they put it on display. In the current house there's nothing but clay and perhaps if you dig a little deeper, yet more clay. :(
Spank86
27-09-12, 07:33 AM
When I was a kid me and some friends found some corrugated iron.
We wanted my dad to take it to the museum in case it was roman.
He told us he did but that they said they already had some. In retrospect it may have gone straight to the dump.
Owenski
27-09-12, 08:29 AM
Not sure if you saw the original thread on Petrolheads (http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=141&t=543304&i=0), however this has to be the ultimate DIY garden archaeology thread/blog (http://gardenbunker.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/background.html)
Warning - do not open the link unless you have a lot of time to spare - it is an addictive tale, the original thread on Petrolheads eventually ran to 231 pages!
What a dead end!
I expected something amazing to come of that! Especially with the mystery passionate historian rocking up at the end.
What a dead end!
I expected something amazing to come of that! Especially with the mystery passionate historian rocking up at the end.
Completely agree!!!
What happened?? :confused::confused:
You can't end a story like that... :smt019
God damn! how annoying, I didn't finish reading it till 1am this morn. I'm booking the next flight to Jersey & taking a spade as hand luggage :(
Sir Trev
27-09-12, 12:35 PM
Completely agree!!!
What happened?? :confused::confused:
You can't end a story like that... :smt019
I was hoping he was about to find some mothballed planes, or crates of gold, or mint condition machine guns still in their makers grease...
Theres a little pyramid in a cemetary in Liverpool, the story behind it is something along the lines of the guy buried there made a deal with the devil that he'd always win at poker & when he lost he'd be taken down to hell so he's sat in his mausolium at a table with 4 aces in his hand....
I was hoping for something similar with the Nazi guy sitting in a chair with a machine gun surrounded by Hitlers watercolours
Dabteacake
27-09-12, 09:39 PM
My brother got some old glass bottles and scrumpy style jugs when he was turning his garden over at his cottage!
Looked nice over the fire place once cleaned lol
BanannaMan
28-09-12, 05:47 AM
I could perhaps be digging a footing trench for garden sleepers, but until my sleepers are delivered, it's a moat! :D
Apparently it works well as a moat.
I'd elaborate, but I'm all wet at the moment. :oops:
My childhood home was near an old WW2 RAF base, we used to play in the old pill boxes and found all sorts of stuff, mainly old bullets, which were still live. We didn't seem to think pulling out the cordite and setting fire to it was that dangerous for some reason. :smt071
Specialone
28-09-12, 06:43 AM
My childhood home was near an old WW2 RAF base, we used to play in the old pill boxes and found all sorts of stuff, mainly old bullets, which were still live. We didn't seem to think pulling out the cordite and setting fire to it was that dangerous for some reason. :smt071
You wouldn't be allowed to do that now with all this H&S rubbish, you'd have to wear safety glasses, ear protection and gloves then you'd be good to carry on :)
widepants
28-09-12, 07:13 AM
You wouldn't be allowed to do that now with all this H&S rubbish, you'd have to wear safety glasses, ear protection and gloves then you'd be good to carry on :)
come on matey , you should know better.
dont forget
http://www.q-apparel.co.uk/images/uploads/RE21A.jpg
My house is built in what used to be the grounds of a large house owned by major general someone or other.
Anyway one day a 3-4" diameter hole appeared in the garden. "That's odd" I thought to myself, maybe an over-zealous squirrel had retrieved a sizeable nut or something. I got on the ground to investigate. "Blimey, that's one committed squirrel" I thought to myself as I stuck a finger in the hole and could not reach the bottom. Found a bamboo cane shoved it down and it also did not reach the bottom. Mind you it was only a 2 foot cane.
Went and got Mrs.H who also looked at it and dismissed any thoughts of it being squirrel related activity and proceeded to set up a cordon around it in case it was a well or something from the old house.
So do I dig and risk dislodging an old well cap and ending up in a soggy well or do a bit of investigating first. Those that know me will have guessed I took the more sensible option of checking it out while Mrs.H increased the cordon.
My immediate neighbours have not been there long enough to know what was there before the houses were built and the old dear down the road who is top-dog in the local historical society was on holiday so off to the Library to look at some old plans of the house.
Libraries are great; got taken to the reference section with proper old cabinets with hardwood draws full of old plans, maps and the like. Problem is the old house was built in 1700's then rebuilt in 1800's so nothing too accurate. Then found stuff from the 1950s when they built the bungalows alongside and Bingo! plan showing bits of the old house. Our house is marked as Vegetable patch and a few trees. No sign of a well anywhere but then we found no wells in any of the bigger plans we'd checked either so perhaps they are not marked. Mrs.H now convinced that actually it could be a cold-store for the veggies instead of a well. So we just widened the cordon and waited for old-dear to get back from her holidays.
Doris (can't remember her name but she looks like a Doris) came home so we invited her over for a cup of tea and to see what she knows. Turns out that there are no known photos of the house and grounds of the former property and when she moved in in 1950 something the grounds were in a right old state so anything that would have been there would have been obscured by brambles, bracken and Rhodiden, Roadiden, Rhodide,.... bushes. Apparently with good water table many houses dug their own wells around here so that was a possibility. Then on her 4th custard cream she suddenly remembers..."Of course you do know about the Spitfire that crashed here don't you" !!!!!
Turns out that just before the battle of Britain a Spitifre was being delivered to the south-coast, got into trouble and crashed pretty much at the end of our garden! Off to her house to look at the box marked "Spitfire that crashed in Mark's Garden" turns out that Spitfires were delivered by ladies in those days, and unfortunately this one didn't make it. Plane failed and crashed and there was some scandal as she was not of an appropriate rank so there was some sort of posthumous promotion and it all got a bit complicated.
So now Mrs.H is convinced our hole is definitely a cavity left by a rotting corpse and will be surrounded by unstable WWII munitions. More tea drunk, thanks given, cordon extended and augmented by an upside down wheelbarrow over the hole.
Few chats with neighbours... dire warnings of someone who knew someone who fell down a well as the builders only planked over it. Further chats about incomplete wreckage clearance in those days so could well be a bit of Spitfire down there but unlikely to be a pilot's corpse. A dig is organised but seems everyone's too busy to help.
The weekend comes. It's not raining. I get the tools. Spade, trowel, plank and set to work.
I set the scaffold plank in front of the hole and kneel on it working on the assumption that if it is a well or an early attempt at a transatlantic tunnel then hopefully should it give way I've got a chance of grabbing onto something.
Carefully probe the hole with a trowel but soon realise it's not getting anywhere so get to work with the spade. Open it up to couple of feet across and couple of feet deep and the hole itself still goes down.
Then I get to some different coloured black clay like stuff then "Thunk" I hit something woody and hollow. Put down spade and switch to trowel (all those years of watching timeteam) Bits of wood. Call Mrs.H who is convinced it's a well head and goes off to check my insurance cover.
Excavate a bit more and more wood but still sounds alarmingly hollow. Start to make a hole in the wood. Scrape, Scrape, Scrape Then a hand thrusts itself up from the hole and grabs me by the throat!! Oh no, hang on a minute, that was the dream from the night before.
So dig and scrape at the wood eventually breaking through into a cavity which is only a few inches deep before more wood. Anyway to cut a possibly interesting but far too long story short turns out it was a massive tree root which had rotted away from the inside leaving a cavity. As I exposed more of it it became clear that the beetles or what-ever it is lives in roots had hollowed it out over the years and it was now beginning to give way. Still doesn't explain the hole unless perhaps it is a well-worn lava escape route or something. Hole filled in, turf relaid and garden now lumpy and bumpy in many places as clearly there are more roots of a similar age giving way or perhaps the root decay has dislodged well heads, spitfire munitions or the corpse of the pilot is digging tunnels under our house. It was however proper exciting for a while.
Fallout
28-09-12, 08:19 AM
Bloody hell Mark, what a let down! A well told tale, especially with the supernatural dream sequence, but let down by a poor ending. Hang on .... you should be a Hollywood film writer!!
Geodude
28-09-12, 08:22 AM
Cool stories guys thanks for my morning entertainment :) xGx
Bloody hell Mark, what a let down! A well told tale, especially with the supernatural dream sequence, but let down by a poor ending. Hang on .... you should be a Hollywood film writer!!
I must admit it was tempting to have an alternate ending whereby I uncovered a zombie bunker where they worshiped AndrewSmith and I managed to napalm them thereby saving the Empire but unfortunately I am a fundamentally honest individual
Owenski
28-09-12, 09:44 AM
About the most interesting thing I've found when digging my self has been earth...
A few sites I've been on with work have uncovered a variety of stuff but nothing of note (excluding the unmarked water main my boss found that very note worthy). Skeletal remains are not uncommon but its nearly always animal, human remains have a habit of getting a site closed down...
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