What interesting items have you dug up?

[Lovage]

I am constantly finding sections of old clay churchwarden pipes and very occassionaly a glazed mouthpiece or a piece of the bowl. I just put them back for someone else to find.
Also get the usual fragments of pottery, a tiny intact perfume bottle and a large ground glass stopper. The allotments used to be the workhouse garden so I guess they dumped their rubbish there in pre-plastic times

[kiwirach]

errmm....the broken off top of a vodka bottle!. not mine i should add!.

theres also a small piece of blue and white pottery floating round the strawberry bed, and for some reason i cant bring myself to take it out...i know where it is roughly and it seems at home there!.

[bobleponge]

An entire French moped, less engine, out of what is now my spud patch, but a coin also turned up in the garden when the new sceptic tank was put in.
From memory it was a Spanish coin, from around the 1600's. Seem to recall it was rare as well, the king on the back was only king for a short time.
Ex Mme Leponge took that with her too.
My ex father in law came up with the best suggestion I could think of. This place was probably on the route of the pilgrims doing the trail down to Santa Campostella, and possibly passed back this way on the way home.

[Patchninja]

What a poignant find.

[Patchninja]

An entire French moped, less engine, out of what is now my spud patch, but a coin also turned up in the garden when the new sceptic tank was put in.
From memory it was a Spanish coin, from around the 1600's. Seem to recall it was rare as well, the king on the back was only king for a short time.
Ex Mme Leponge took that with her too.
My ex father in law came up with the best suggestion I could think of. This place was probably on the route of the pilgrims doing the trail down to Santa Campostella, and possibly passed back this way on the way home.

You mean they traveled by mobylette?

[bobleponge]

You mean they traveled by mobylette?

That was my first thought PN, but then pooh-poohed it, in favour of the car, due to distances involved.

[Rabidbun]

We used to live near a canal when I was little; dad was always digging stuff up in the vegetable patches. The dredgers used to put the silt down the hill by the side of the canal and our garden was a section of that slope. Great for veggies too!

We must have had a small cupboard's worth of broken blue and white glazed crockery, lots of clay pipes, spectacles and all sorts of broken glassware by the end - will have to ask him if he can remember finding anything else interesting amongst the potatoes!

[Glutton4...]

I once found a fossilised Ammonite, whilst working in Cambridgeshire. But I understand they're not that rare.

When I was a kid my Dad found a Bomb in the garden. Round thing with spikes on. He was told to put it in a bucket of sand and leave it alone. Then someone (eventually) came and took it away.

[OllieMartin]

When I was a kid my Dad found a Bomb in the garden. Round thing with spikes on. He was told to put it in a bucket of sand and leave it alone. Then someone (eventually) came and took it away.

Sounds like a hedgehog to me

I can't imagine what kind of bomb would be small enough to fit in a bucket AND have spikes. The only spiky 'bomb' I can think of is a sea mine:


but that wouldn't fit in a bucket.

I'm intrigued.

[Guttata]

A mortar and a hand grenade, neither were live they had been converted into lighters. Caused a bit of a panic for my friend when he hit the grenade with the spade, I have never seen him move so quickly in the entire 12 years I have known him

[northepaul]

Bones!!!!
In our last house, I was digging up to plant some lavender (so not too deep really) and unearthed some, thought they might be human, but turned out to be from cattle, leg bones...?!?
It was a bit surreal to say the least!

[geoff]

I'm told that the previous tennant used to put down a lot of carpets, even though that was against the rules. I removed them, but four years on I still unearth scraps of carpet when I dig
Apart from that I also unearthed a car steering rack

There were a lot of tools left in the old coldframe though; I've gradually repaired them and am using them

[OverWyreGrower]

Bones, glass, odd shaped bit of rusty metal (old door and window fixings we think) and loads of pottery...

It's a bit odd, as there has never been a dwelling on the land, as it's old grazing land...

We were always hoping for something significant enough to get Time Team in, but sadly, nothing of actual interest has yet been dug up!

[HeyWayne]

I dug up a rabbit skull on my allotment when I first got it. It was too big for a mouse/rat.

[Jeanied]

A 1964 penny (crikey they were big - you'd know if you had a pocketful of those!) from my parsnip bed - along with an A1 silver plate dessert fork!