.jpg)
In the
middle of our town there is a church. Next to the church there is an old
school. Next to the old school there is a play centre. Next to the play centre
there is a car park. And in the car park there is a hole.
Holes in
the ground may be a nuisance to some, but to an archaeology-lover they are a
magnet! I know that before the old school (1900s) and play centre (1920s) were
built, this area was the livestock market. Son 2 studied photos of it in
school, looking at how life has changed since the days when farmers drove their
cattle and geese into our town for sale down the hill from the church.
Ben and I were
passing the other weekend and decided that the ‘stuff’ piled up next to the
hole was just too interesting to ignore. We spotted a huge ox shoulder-blade
and many other bones, indicating that meat as well as livestock was sold around
here.
There’s so
much ‘stuff’ in the hole – in layers as you can see – that it’s clear that the
area was covered with rubbish at some point, probably to form a base before the
car park surface was laid.
It’s hard
to pin down exactly when the layers were formed, but we seem to have a
‘pre-school’ market layer, and a ‘post-school’ layer of 1950s and 1960s bits
and bobs which probably just pre-date the car park.
You might
feel that rubbish from within living memory is, well, just, rubbish, but it’s
from a very desirably ‘retro’ period and tells more about life in our town in
those days than finding the same things on a Vide Grenier stall, so I rather
enjoyed peering through the fences and picking out a few things from the spoil
heap.
Well-washed,
they look rather special around the house.
Four little
bottles, glittering, iridescent and impossible to capture in a photo.
And
Marie-Antoinette, a Limoges ‘cameo’ – a very popular and inexpensive form of
jewellery from the 1950s and ’60s - although I can’t find a photo of this
specific cameo on the net, there are many, many others for sale, some of them
in the little bronze setting which has corroded around this fragment. I bet
someone was upset when this broke – maybe she still lives in our town! Wouldn’t
she be amazed that her treasure has resurfaced after all these years?
It's bright, it's 3.45 in the afternoon, it's 20 degrees C outside, but we're in the dark, wearing shades...
