Monthly Archives: June 2015

VM_365 Day 352 Waterloo to WW1 event. Stage 2

Education, Post Medieval, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 352The VM_365 post for Day 352 is of the second two stages in our TimeTunnel, built for four days of school activities at Bradstow School in Broadstairs in which we trace the changes in British society from the end of the Napoleonic Wars with the Battle of Waterloo to the beginning of World War 1.

Yesterday’s post for Day 351 of the VM_365 project followed the early years of the 19th century from the French revolution to the Battle of Waterloo to what life was like for rural Britain at that time.

In today’s images you can see the second two stages of our journey through time. Using the easel shown in the image on the left we introduce Queen Victoria who came to the throne in 1837, and her marriage not long afterwards to Prince Albert, a prince from a small German state. The German origins of the British royal family are explained and also Queen Victoria’s familial relationship to many of the European Royal families. We also highlight Prince Albert’s promotion of liberal reforms and new industries and innovations from across the British Empire.

In the second vignette shown on the left we introduce the Crimean war which began in 1853 and ended in 1856.  We highlight that Britain was now allied with France as well as Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire against the Russian Empire. We emphasise the harsh conditions in which the allied troops were fighting particularly in terms of the cold winters and poor medical care and describe the contributions made by Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole to improving and professionalising nursing of wounded soldiers. We highlight that although the two women were from very different parts of the British Empire both travelled to the Crimea to help.

On a lighter note,  in this second vignette we also introduce another item of clothing, a knitted full face covering which was designed to protect soldiers faces from the bitter cold and show the many ways in which it could be worn. This item of clothing was later named the Balaclava Helmet after the battle at which it was first worn.

More stages in our travel in time from Waterloo to World War 1 tomorrow………..

 

 

VM_365 Day 351 Waterloo to WW1 event Stage 1

Education, Industrial Archaeology, Post Medieval, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project, World War 1

VM 351

The VM_365 post for Day 251 is of the first two stages in our TimeTunnel, built for four days of school activities at Bradstow School in Broadstairs.

In the Tunnel we trace the changes in British society from the century following the end of the Napoleonic Wars at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to the early years of World War 1. The journey focuses on friendships and fallouts between nations, population and families.

In the first two stages of the trip through time we have two vignettes where we explain the ideals and the effects of the French revolution and the reaction of the other nations of Europe, which culminated in the confrontation with Napoleon’s Army at Waterloo. The local connections with Wellington’s Army and Thanet’s ports are part of the story told at this point in time and a lighter note is introduced deciding whether the Duke of Wellington lent his name to a form of waterproof boot or to informal running shoes. Anyone heard of the Duke of Trainers?

The second station explores the way of life of most of the people of Britain in the early 19th century,  at the time of the Battle of Waterloo. The majority of the population lived in rural communities or small towns and industry in our region was concentrated on manufacturing of supplies for the Navy such as the production of Gunpowder in the Faversham area. We explore methods for preserving and transporting country produce  in barrels and casks and the innovation of sealing food in cans which transformed the preservation and transport of food in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Canning started as an experiment with the Napoleonic French Army and was taken up with enthusiasm by the British Army. The theme of canned food is taken up again later in the TimeTunnel in the trenches of the Western front.  Bully Beef for Tommy.

The final theme in this pre-industrial era is to point out that the principal sources of power remained that of the muscle power of humans and animals, especially horses. Now is it possible that we were able to get two fully grown horses into the Time Tunnel? Follow the journal posts this week to find out…

 

VM_365 Day 350 Virtual Museum TimeTunnel for School Event

Archaeology, Art Inspired by the Past, Broadstairs, Education, Industrial Archaeology, Modern, Post Medieval, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project, What's going on?, World War 1

VM 350

Today’s image for Day 349 of the VM_365 project was taken as the Trust set up a Virtual Museum TimeTunnel, ready for four days of workshops for schools to be hosted at Bradstow School in Broadstairs from the 15th to the 18th of June 2015.

The Heritage Lottery funded event ‘Friendships and Fallouts, from Waterloo to World War One’ will see as many as 500 children pass through the workshops and activities in the grounds of the school. The event commemorates both the bicentenery of the battle of Waterloo and the continued marking of the hundredth anniversary of the First World War.

The TimeTunnel will take children on a journey through the changes that took place in British life in the hundred years from the defeat of Napoleon to the outbreak of a conflict that reached every part of the world.  The TimeTunnel visits  a series of scenes that explore the changes from industrialisation to the great inventions of the early 20th century which created the means to make global conflict possible.  As the journey through the tunnel takes place, the friendships between nations, families, working people and soldiers are investigated and the fallouts that provoked conflict between people and nations are revealed. The journey through the TimeTunnel ends in the battlefields of the Western Front with the fate of all the travellers left undecided.

Journal articles over the next four days will reveal the secrets of the VM TimeTunnel and follow the progress of the event.

VM_365 Day 349 Miller & Co. Codd bottle from Broadstairs

Uncategorised, Uncategorized

VM 349-1Today’s image for Day 349 of the VM_365 project shows a late Victorian/early 20th century Codd bottle manufactured for a soda water company from Broadstairs. Soft drinks bottles from other companies in Thanet have previously featured on Day 347 – Reeves & Co. Ltd and Day 348 – Philpott’s of the VM_365 project.

Codd-neck bottles were used for carbonated drinks; their unique design patented by Hiram Codd of Camberwell, London in 1872,  included a pinched neck enclosing a glass marble and a rubber washer. The bottles were filled upside down and the pressure of the gas used in the carbonation forced the marble against the rubber washer sealing the gas in. The pinched neck of the bottle incorporated a small chamber for the marble to move into so that it did not obstruct pouring.

This clear glass example is from a company called Miller & Co. ,which is moulded along one side of the bottle, moulded on the other is ‘Broadstairs’.  The glass marble and rubber washer are still intact which is relatively unusual for these bottles as they were often broken by small boys to retrieve the glass marbles! Glass marbles from bottles such as these used to be a frequent chance find on local beaches popular in the late Victorian and early 20th century and were also frequently found in fields used as Victorian rubbish tips.

A clean water supply was important to our local towns in terms of hygiene and health both for locals and holiday maker alike and Broadstairs had been favoured with improvements to the town water supply in 1859 with the construction of Crampton Tower which featured on Day 262 and a new reservoir which featured on Day 263 of the VM_365 project.

VM_365 Day 348 Philpott Mineral Water Company, Ramsgate

Archaeology, Industrial Archaeology, Modern, Post Medieval, Ramsgate, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 348Today’s image for Day 348 of the VM_365 project shows another early 20th century glass soft drink bottle from the Trust’s collection from a local manufacturer.

The bottle is made of olive green glass and was found with its screw cap stopper still intact. The roundel reads ‘Philpott Ramsgate 1911’ with the company logo in the centre.

This bottle was produced for the Philpotts Mineral Water Company who were established in 1850 and operated from 1A Cavendish Street, Ramsgate. Presumably the company drew their water from a draw well, noted on the 19th century 1:500 town map of Ramsgate, and aerated it on site in a similar way to Reeve & Co. Ltd who featured in yesterday’s post for Day 347 of the VM_365 project.

In 1878, Philpotts opened a shop at 16 High Street from which they sold their products.  The census for 1881 indicates that Stephen Philpott, owner of the mineral water company employed 4 men and a boy.  The shop closed in 1905 and the company itself ceased to trade in 1920 when it was taken over by the Ozonic Mineral Water Company, the soft drinks arm of the Tomson and Wotton Brewery.

 

VM_365 Day 347 Reeves and Co. Ltd, Margate

Archaeology, Industrial Archaeology, Margate, Post Medieval, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 347

Today’s image for Day 347 of the VM_365 project shows a glass soft drinks bottle from the mineral water manufacturers Reeves & Co Ltd who operated between 1849 and 1964 at Margate. This bottle probably dates from around the late 19th century to the early 1900’s and reads ‘Reeve and Co Margate’ in the outer oval and ‘Trade Mark’ in the inner oval.

The Reeve and Co. Mineral Water factory was established within an enclosed yard at Hawley Street in 1849 where they constructed a purpose built facility to draw spring water from the Dane Stream via a well or a culvert which was then carbonated on site. The carbonated water was a popular beverage among holiday makers at Margate.

In the later 19th century Reeve and Co. engaged in a tremendous variety of trades centred around wholesale trade, processing and distribution and also had a retail shop on Hawley Street, the frontage of which can still be seen pronouncing 70 years in operation which dates the shop front to around 1909.

A lively narrative of the operation of the plant was given in the local newspaper, Keble’s Gazette in January 1889 describing how as many as 120 people were kept employed in a range of processes that required very different skills among the staff from fish gutting to cutting and soldering tin cans for storage. The key to Reeve’s business was the procurement, storage, processing and distribution of commodities. It is clear from the description in Keble’s gazette that the factory bridged a gap between the labour intensive trades of the fisheries and agriculture that supported the rural economy, and the intensive division of labour that represented the new industrial manufacturing processes of the later 19th century. In the final passages of the description it is implied that the factory was also fulfilling a social role in providing a continuity of employment in the towns population whose traditional working patterns were diminishing in importance and who were being driven into poverty.

Reeves and Co. Ltd connected the historic import and export functions of Margate as a sea trading port and the seasonal products of the local agriculture and the fisheries with the increasing demand for food in the growing cities, particularly London. Much as London exported its leisure time to the coast, the coastal and agricultural products were sent back along the trade networks to the city, preserved, bottled and tinned.

With the general decline of Britain’s industrial cities and trading networks in the period after World War Two the type of fetching and carrying business Reeve and Co. were engaged in had to compete with increased international imports and declining demand from the failing industrial towns. The niche markets and local networks were no longer sufficient to support it and the company closed in 1964.

VM_365 Day 346 What about the box? Imports from Colchester.

Archaeology, Coy Archive, In the Store, Margate, Modern, Roman, Thanet's Heritage Pioneers, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 346

Today’s image for Day 346 shows the wooden box that was used to store some of the Roman pottery excavated at the Roman building near Drapers Mill by Joe Coy in the late 1950’s and 1960’s which featured in yesterday’s VM_365 post for Day 345. The wooden box holding Joe Coy’s Roman pottery dates to the late 1950’s – 1960’s, comtemporary with the time the dig at Drapers Mill was carried out and itself has a story to tell us.

Museum stores house thousands of artefacts and when visiting the stores it is often not long before you see an old tobacco tin, wooden matchbox and the like from the 20th century that had been pressed into service as a make-do receptacle for a find. This was a time when Tupperware, cardboard and plastic wrapping were generally less common and before there were stricter museum curation policies (that specify how materials are to be received by the curating museum). So, just as with a visit to the family shed, you can see how, what were familiar items of recent times, were opportunistically utilized for safe storage.

Coming across such containers can jog the memory and be a fascinating encounter as sometimes what was ubiquitous, valueless and discardable packaging, say 70 years ago, now has a story to tell. Occasionally this is as insightful as the artefact within. In those times we consumed less, things were less easy to replace, and there was more of an attitude of ‘make-do and mend’; what items came in were often carefully designed and very well-made: here was a chance for the prudent 20th century recycler to find a new use for old packaging. What was to hand was helpfully taken into service, not so much to save cash but more likely because there were limited alternatives.

We only have to go back a few decades to the 1960s to be within that time and we can see that Joe Coy’s best pottery finds from the excavations at Drapers Mills from the turn of that decade came to be housed in a robust wooden box convenient for shelving and for transport for when the finds were needed for display or to show the pottery experts.

The box is made of thin ply-wood and its measurements and markings are in imperial standards for it pre-dates the switch to decimalization in 1971. Accordingly it measures 11 by 10 inches and has a height of 6¾ʺ. It had been marked in now fading black-ink by stencilling or stamping with the name ‘BETTS’. It was seen recently by Pete Nash who recognized it immediately as coming from the Betts toothpaste tube factory at Colchester.

Also marked on one side (more obviously by stencilling and in a different type-face) are the contents, described in light traces as ‘TUBES’ with what is likely to be the quantity given but which cannot now be read clearly. The price is given by means of the same stencil as ‘BETTS’ telling the reader ‘BOX CHARGED 4/-’ in what we call nowadays ‘old money’ namely four schillings (20p in today’s decimal currency). The ply-wood is ⅛ of an inch thick, with metal staples used to bind the sheets together. This makes for a container it is very sturdy but light and doubtless the dimensions relate to the size of the tubes inside and their safe transit and housing.

The tubes of toothpaste originally stored in the box were almost certainly of soft metal and shorter than today, so may have sat in two rows within the box. Masking-tape had been added at a later stage, probably to secure an improvised lid as the original top is missing (was that perhaps used in a role as a tray as we might use a shoe box lid today or had it been broken on opening?). Did the original lid say more about the content? A makeshift lid was provided when it was pressed into service to store the pottery, perhaps in the 1960s or 1970s, made of ‘hardboard’ which is another material that was ubiquitous at the time, being used in light carpentry, but now rarely seen. This was also something likely to be simply convenient to hand which has been cut to just lie over the top of the box. It too is inscribed, but this time with summary information on the present contents and in marker pen, short and to the point “Joe’s pots DM.”

Aptly the box and perhaps what it originally held were imports to Thanet, just as it contains imports from the Roman era in its present use. One of these, a whole globular beaker, as featured in yesterday’s post for Day 346 of the VM_365 project, is a type known from Roman Colchester, one that may have been made there, which would be a striking coincidence.

Of course the reuse of former packaging is well-attested through the ages: from Roman wine and oil amphorae seen reused as caskets for burials (with examples known on Thanet and in north-east Kent) to the tea-chests which were an everyday item seen in second use in ‘storage and removal’ through the second half of the 20th century. Doubtless old jam jars will be employed for new home-made jams this summer, some maybe first had jam from Tiptree, near Colchester.

The Betts factory which was still operating in the 1960s closed to be redeveloped recently for housing. Joe Coy’s box has become an artefact and its history ties it in time to the important excavations at Drapers Mills that occurred when the box was itself young. What happened to all the thousands of other boxes of this type dispatched from the Betts factory and are there other surviving examples from Thanet?

Dr Steven Willis (University of Kent), Photo: Lloyd Bosworth (University of Kent). Thanks to Pete Nash of Colchester.

VM_365 Day 345 Wooden box stores Roman pottery collection. Part 2

Archaeology, Coy Archive, Margate, Roman, Roman pottery, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 345Today’s  image for Day 345 of the VM_365 project shows a selection of pottery from excavations carried out by Joe Coy at Draper’s Mill, Margate during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. These vessels and sherds were stored in a wooden box and a general exploration of the samian contents have previously featured on Day 86 of the VM_365 project.

A deeper dig into Joe Coy’s box of Roman pottery reveals more about the site and the collection. The ensemble features samian ware very prominently and some is shown in this photo; it is clear that this ‘boxed set’ is a selection of items considered particularly interesting by the excavator.

Samian ware was the fine imported table ware of the Roman period which was relatively expensive and, indeed, rather ‘flashy’ perhaps when set on the Roman dining table alongside other locally produced vessels. Several vessels here have the stamp of their maker present. Leaving aside the three complete or near complete vessels in the foreground of the post from Day 86 there are a number of vessels which are represented by several sherds and in these cases much of the vessel is present. This being so we might speculate: was there an accident one day when several vessels were broken and needed to be discarded?

Two of the larger samian vessels are bowls made at Lezoux in Central Gaul, now located in modern France (top right). From the reading of the names of the makers (or is it the name of the workshop?) impressed into the floor of the vessels, together with their shape, it is possible to say with confidence that they date to the middle of the second century AD. The makers stamps show them to be the work of Paterclinus and Patricius ii. The most frequent vessel form amongst the samian is, however, the conical cup (Dragendorff’s type 33) though this is present in a variety of sizes.

The small whole buff-coloured globular vessel is a beaker (Jason Monaghan’s type 2C6) and is a form seen at other sites in the region such as Colchester. Pots in this form have likewise been recovered at Cooling in north Kent (on the Hoo Peninsula) where there was a major pottery industry at this time.

The samian includes first century ware, while a little later in date is one of the type 33 cups which is a particularly fine example of Hadrianic date and more orange than red (bottom right). Later samian forms occur too. One of these late samian vessels came to the Drapers Mills site from Trier, then in Eastern Gaul, in the early third century and is noteworthy in lacking the finesse of earlier samian wares. Present too in the box are other non-samian Roman finer wares including a sherd from a beaker from the Nene Valley near Peterborough, and the lower part of a vessel with gold mica-dusting giving it an intentionally attractive glittery appearance (on the left but with glitter not caught in this photo).

Another fine table item present is of much more recent date being a decorated base fragment of black Wedgewood Jasperware (bottom, right of centre on top of a small pile of fine Roman greyware sherds) which was perhaps originally thought by the excavators to be fine Roman ware. Samian and Nene Valley beakers were the equivalent to Wedgwood products in their time and Jasperware often featured goddesses and other imagery drawn from the classical world so their companionable boxing-up here seems very apt.

Dr Steve Willis

Photos by Lloyd Bosworth, University of Kent.

VM_365 Day 344 Ramsgate’s Air Raid Tunnels

Archaeology, Ramsgate, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project, World War II

VM 344

Today’s image for Day 344 of the VM_365 project shows a section of the World War II air raid tunnel system which was constructed under the town of Ramsgate in 1939.

The tunnel system exploited both the natural topography and geology of the town. The contours of the town, rise in all directions from the central valley around which the town developed from the 16th and 17th century onwards. The tunnel system follows this rise in the natural topography and encompassed the town, albeit below ground. The tunnels were cut into the chalk bedrock and chalk, if it is cut correctly, stabilises naturally and is self supporting, making it ideal for a deep underground system.  In the picture above you can see the seams of flint that occur naturally in the chalk.

The tunnels were constructed beneath the road system of the town which avoided legal issues that might occur had the system extended below private properties. Most of the tunnels were left unlined as the average depth was approximately 21 metres below ground level which was considered safe to survive a direct hit from bombs on the ground above.

Ramsgate Tunnels are now open for guided public tours at weekends and during the week and are well worth a visit as the tour also covers aspects of the history of the Victorian railway tunnel which played it part in the World War II tunnels system. Advance booking is recommended and there is a free exhibition on Ramsgate’s part in Operation Dynamo, the Evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.

 

VM_365 Day 343 Sailor’s Welfare, Ramsgate Harbour

Churches, Industrial Archaeology, Post Medieval, Ramsgate, Uncategorised, VM_365 Project

VM 343Today’s image for Day 343 of the VM_365 project, another in the Our Thanet series, shows a group of 19th century structures at Ramsgate Harbour.  At the left side of the image is Jacob’s Ladder,  the Sailor’s Church is in the centre of the image and the oddlynamed Smack Boy’s Home is on the right side.

Jacob’s Ladder is a flight of ashlar steps that were constructed in 1826, replacing an earlier set of wooden steps that were built in the further to the east in the mid 18th century. The steps were designed by the architect John Shaw an the construction of Jacob’s Ladder in stone  undoubtedly made it easier to access the harbour safely from the cliff top.

The Sailor’s Church and Sailor’s Home was founded with the support of the vicar of Christ Church, which was located  in Vale Square nearby.  In 1863 50 fishing smacks  were registered at Ramsgate harbour and by 1906 there were 168 registered smacks operating from Ramsgate. The crews of the fishing smacks were made up of a skipper with four other crew members, who were often young boys many of whom had come from the workhouse, some of those apprenticed to the vessels were as young as 10 years old. The young crew members became known as smack boys.

Work on the fishing vessels was hard and dangerous work, especially for the smack boys and a number of the vicars of nearby Christ Churchrecognised that the men and boys who crewed the fishing smacks and other vessels sailing from Ramsgate not only needed spiritual guidance but also physical help.

When the Sailor’s Church was eventually opened  in 1878 the church was located on the ground floor and a dormitory above was provided shelter and some comfort to the young apprentices when they came ashore.

As a result of pressure put on the Board of Trade by Reverend Brenan of Christ Church  a three storey purpose built  Smack Boys’ Home was opened in a building next  to the Sailor’s Church in 1881. Ramsgate seems to be unique among Britain’s fishing ports in providing a purpose built refuge for the Smack Boys.

In later years the Smack Boys home was used to house sailors rescued from shipwrecks, which often occurred off the Goodwin Sands. During the First World War over 3000 men were given food, clothing and shelter as well as medical treatment in the home.

It is still possible to visit these unique buildings, Jacob’s Ladder and the Sailor’s Church are both accessible to the public and the Sailor’s Church continues to hold services and also offers teas and coffees during peak seasons.