There is so much glass and crockery here it seems just too much for a few cottage tenants to have just randomly throw their junk out especially in the concentrations that we have been finding the bottles . True that no doubt they did sling stuff in like missiles but further investigation is proving that this was too compacted in certain areas to have just been a few individual homesteads that were dumping rubbish , it is almost on a small scale industrial tipping scheme .
The workers cottages were built in 1750 as was the main farmhouse which is now a private residence , there are also a few other random cottages along this one single track or now more like a gravelled lane . In a situation like this you have to try and re assess the task in hand and workout exactly what they were doing back then , was it just a few cottage tenants throwing out their rubbish into the pond ? Initially we thought this to be just the case and we were quite happy to extract some of the very early bottles etc that have become historically important to collectors of such items . Further investigations however have proved that this was not the case entirely and a much more concentrated effort was put forward to dump rubbish from the local residents .
The main task of yesterdays excursion was to tidy up with no real intention of any more digging but we chanced upon one area which again started to produce further bottles of mixed ages . The owner granted us permission to continue as the pond is now beginning to look a bit more tidier after our clean up . It is possible we may have to engage a mechanical digger to completely clear out but that is on the back burner for now and we are much happier to hand dig rather than use a machine but it is an option .
A typical system for dumping local trash was for example in this case and many others were no doubt carried out by a farm labourer who would collect everyones rubbish within the local community , horse and cart or just a barrow and then pick the easiest and less strenuous area to tip . Up the track to the pond and tip the barrow full of trash straight off the bank and job done and this process continued all along this bank where areas were chosen to tip and dump . It certainly gets your thinking cap on and you have to try and put yourself in their shoes and imagine what you would have done if this was your job to get rid of the neighbouring rubbish , so far this has proved to be the case .
