George P Collard

This  top of an earthenware flagon is a more recent find. It is impressed with the name P. Collard & Son, wine and spirit merchants, Canterbury. In fact the complete name should read George P Collard who traded as a wine and spirit merchant from their premises at 32 St Margaret s Street Canterbury. The nearest date I could find in a directory is 1884 and that came from a Canterbury directory on the internet, Above the word "son" there is a Lambeth Doulton potters mark.
It is surprising how many fragments of large flagon  that do appear on the Margate coastline especially in and around the harbour area. So far this year I have only found two fragments that have a clear identity the rest have been unidentifiable.

Brylcreem

I have never been one for Brylcreem, but this bottle does fascinate me. It just oozes 1930's art deco by its design and shape plus it has that beach weathered  appearance. Items from the 1930's are something I do not often come across as my focus is the older stuff but I do cherry pick unique 1930's items for the Margate museum.
Come the end of November the Beachcomber exhibition at the Museum  ends and I should point out that my only contribution to the exhibition was to find the stuff. All the work, research, layout and presentation was done by the army of Museum volunteers.
 Last week I donated 12 complete Margate bottles to the Museum collection and I am now going through the items the Museum can have for display material or for the permanent collection.
My two pet projects Georgian Margate and Earthenware in general are coming along well and I am learning more day by day about that area of Margate. I have found earthenware pieces of Dutch and German origin and it does come as a surprise that German spring water was bottled in three pint earthenware containers and sealed with cement. Only to be exported to London and then consumed on Margate main sands.
Recently inside the harbour I did find part of a top of a George Barret ginger beer bottle that matched up perfectly with another piece I found in February during the deep digging . Both pieces were found in different locations, something I put down to the excavations.
Shards from George Barret Ginger beer bottles are heading the tally at present but the reason I keep them all is that I can get data about all the different designs and manufactures of the bottles. Something that is becoming clear is that in the same time period there are two distinct quality of bottles used by the same companies. I am now starting to think that this could be down to Victorian snobbery  as the mineral water outlets may have deliberately catered for two different class of customers by the quality of the bottles.

Bathgate Soda Water

Following from previous posting I have photographed the Bathgate Soda water bottle  retrieved from the seabed off Broadstairs. I have photographed the bottle especially for the benefit of internet search engines. The bottle has the "EX" duty mark that dates it between 1817 to 1834. Other websites indicate that Bathgate was a chemist in Calcutta India. So I am working on the assumption this bottle may have English East India connections as it was retrieved from the sea bed.



This bottle that has a striking similarity to the one above. It was found this year in Margate Harbour. It was found after all the spoil from the digging arising from the under pinning of the stone pier had washed down. It has no potters mark or any other impressions that does make accurate identification and dating impossible. However I am interested in the similarity to the bottle above, plus I also know at what depth it was dug and the location in the Harbour. In the same location I did find remains of English squat cylinder bottles from the 1780's to 1820's period.


This is earthenware shard no 2 on my records. It is part of a flagon lent by E G Wastall who were wine and  spirit merchants. The shard was found as result of the sea defence works at Margate this year.Even though the shard is impressed Ramsgate the company had premises in both Ramsgate and Margate trading from 1874 to 1914. The Ramsgate store was in Queen Street Ramsgate and the Margate one was at 19 High Street Margate.

The Margate sea defence diaries - identified earthenware shards No 1

Following on from my previous posting I am now going through the process of checking all the earthenware shards I found this year in Margate Harbour during the sea defence works.
This piece found in Margate Harbour is impressed with part of a word that contains the lettering "RWEILER". The complete bottle is either a ceramic gin bottle or a water bottle and dates from around the 1850's.The full lettering on the bottle would read GEORG KREUZBERG AHRWEILER RHENPREUSSEN and the origin is German.

First dig of the Autumn

This morning was my first dig of the autumn and the objective was to finish off what I started in late spring, recording old bottle remains on the Margate main sands. It was low water and it was a familiar sight of shingle breaking through  the sand mixed with fragments of glass and earthenware.
Most of the bottle bases throughout the year have now been removed with myself being the main culprit . I must have exceeded 200 + most dating from the 1780's to the dawn of the twentieth century. However today I did manage to find a dozen ranging from the beginning to the end of the 19th century.

In the photograph the pontil scarring on the bottles can been clearly seen and that helps date the bottles. The top three on the left are fine examples of where the iron pontil rod has been attached so the bottle could be finished off and the lip applied. These bottles more than likely dates  in the 1820's to 1840's bracket.
The remaining bottles date from the later  Victorian period . Representing a Victorian day at the sea side of which the evidence is still in abundance on the foreshore at Margate.

The sea defence diaries- the final chapter

Today I took into the Margate Museum everything single item I have found during the sea defence works at Margate. All in all it represents about seven months work of photographing and digging  in and around the Margate Harbour area.
The final phase of the sea defence works has been a bit of a disappointment as I never realised that very little digging would be taking place around the Kings Steps area where the revetment is to be constructed. However this has been out weighed by all the information gathered and items founds during the underpinning of the Stone Pier since the end of December.
This morning I took full advantage of the effects of the recent strong South Westerly winds that have scoured the through the silt in Margate Harbour from earlier the digging. Today I found three old bottles, one complete clay pipe and part of an animal jaw bone.
One of the bottles was embossed Weavers Plumstead which just happened to be a small company once owned by the Grandfather of  John Williams (curator of the Margate Museum). So on those credentials I let him have the bottle.The other bottles were a Weston's dairies milk bottle and the other was an early coke bottle.
From now until September beach combing  finds do fall sharply because  everything  is either covered in green sea weed making it hard to see and the weather is not as volatile like in the Winter months when the sand can easily erode on one tide.
In summing up, I have found clay pipes and stems dating back to the early 1700's , fragments of bottles also dating back also the the 1700's and many shards dating back to that period. Unfortunately nothing is complete except a few clay pipes.
From the 1800's to the 1900's  I have found a whole range of items that represent Margate as tourist resort during that period, plus items relating to Margate Harbour as a working harbour. In this category I have found complete items like bottles both glass and earthenware.
The finds that interest me most and have 100% provenance are pieces of the stone pier constructed between 1812 to and 1815 that were lost in the February storm of 1953 when the lighthouse on the end of the stone pier collapsed into the sea.

In September the exhibition at the Margate Museum will be about History of the area in and around the Jetty in including the Harbour area, I suppose the entire area as seen in the  the view of the Webb painting in the Turner Centre . Many of my finds found during the sea defence works will be on display, but not all as the exhibition will not be about items found during the sea defence digging. Once the exhibition is finished the Museum can take whatever they want for their collection and I will keep the remaining items to form another collection of the finds found during the underpinning of the stone pier to accompany the photographs I took.I hope to have something in place for the 60th anniversary of the storm in February 2013.

The Sea Defence Diaries 21/05/12 - The search continues

I haven't posted much on the sea defence works in recent weeks because no real digging has been taking place in the historic areas. Also the low tides have not been that good.
However, my quest to find items relating to the history of Margate still continues and my recent scout inside the harbour area (21/05/12) has turned up a few bits.
I am no longer finding items on an industrial scale and my latest find of a earthenware salt glazed bottle is a bonus. The bottle is in remarkable condition as found in the  harbour silt, it has no makers mark and the cork is still inside.

Of the other items found was a bottle stopper dated 1926 and was issued by George Beer & Rigden Faversham. The company was formed in 1922 when brewers George Beer of Canterbury and Rigden of Faversham merged.
I also found many shards and I have photographed the ones that are significant like the piece from the refreshment Pavillion on Margate Jetty. The other two pieces are from a design I call Letherby and Christopher as that is the logo on other pieces of the same pattern that I have been finding. These pieces are my most common finds and I do know that the company are caterers. Originally it was believed they were sea front caterers and to date I have found no evidence of that. Following another lead the pieces could have come from the paddle steamer trade, to add strength to this theory I have been finding a fair number of pieces in the mouth of the harbour. One piece does have a makers mark "Copeland" "York" England and  that has given me something further to go by.

I jumped the barrier around the current sea defence works to take a photograph (above) of the deep digging. As you can see the contractors are digging deep and even by my standards I would find jumping in that hole risky if I was on my own.
 For some reason there is very little turning up within the barrier area, my only recent finds being a 1920's/ 30's Sharpes Dairies milk bottle from Ramsgate, a plain bottle stopper and many clay pipe stems. I expect this is due the fact that as soon as holes are dug they are refilled once the job is done.