Another Deep Philly Brickliner

[GuntherHess]

would love to have those bricks.

 

[cannibalfromhannibal]

I'm with Jim! A nap sounds good! Really, though, are these privys or wells? Are they commercial like hotels or residential? I find your digs fascinating and unique in my digging experience....these seem to be in larger cities.....is this a correct assumption? As in, I can forget finding something like this in little Hannibal? Largest thing I have seen was over the river in Quincy, a ginormous brick cistern used for the fire dept. in late toc about 30 ' deep and 25+' diameter, empty of course. Buddy of mine scraped open the edge while doing a demolition job, and it was scary just peering over the edge! Fine job, you guys, keep the stories and pics coming! I scrape and scrap HARD just for one pontiled soda! Your stories give me dreams of cracking open Dr Dyott's glass mine! YEAH! Jack

 

[Ratzilla]

I'm sure this pit was residential, but commercial establishments had them, too, some of those are widebody monsters. In Philly, the depth of the pits was decided mainly by geography - they dug them as deep as they could until they hit some fairly impenetrable strata. Where the soil was reasonably easy to excavate, the pits run past 30 feet, while other, equally old sections of the city rarely have pits past 7 or 8 feet. In the late 1700's there were also regulations as to what the maximum depth of a privy could be in certain sections of the city(presumably to avoid contaminating nearby wells), so that's another variable in the oldest part of town. I've heard of deep pits occasionally being found in small towns, but they seem more common in big cities. I wonder what the deepest one out there that anyone has dug is - around 45 feet is the deepest I've heard of in Philly, but I know some go past 50 feet in Pittsburgh. That's a lot of dirt...and hopefully bottles[]

 

[botlguy]

For what it's worth, I personally have dug a Redwood lined 5 X !0 X 15 footer in Santa Ana, Calif. and my digging partner dug a Redwood lined 25 footer in San Diego. Both of these were behind Boarding / Rooming Houses. Santa Ana was a small town, San Diego a bit bigger but nothing like Philly. Our pits were mid-1880s at the earliest.

 

[cacarpetbagger]

ORIGINAL: baltbottles

We dug another deep brickliner in Philly on Saturday. It wasn't as good as the one a couple weeks ago but still wasn't bad. It measured in at 31 feet deep. We found a couple dozen pontiled sodas some stoneware bottle and several pontiled meds. Also there were about a hundred milks and blob beers mixed in the mostly clay and brick fill. Sorry i din't get a picture of these as it was very late and I was tired when we were spiting up the finds.

Chris

How could you tell where the pit was?

 

[Penn Digger]

Another nice dig. Congrats. Are you going to show any of those pontils when you get them cleaned up?

PD

 

[cannibalfromhannibal]

FASCINATING! Deepest I have dug here was about 22' but likely was a well. Deepest privy that I am sure was a privy was at 18'. I can't imagine a 30+ footer, never mind a 50 footer! Your stories on these monsters are simply heart stopping! Keep it up! Love seeing what comes next, as I am sure you all do! Jack

 

[rpinkham]

Hey you guys! Save some bottles for the rest of us please!

Congrats on the nice finds!

 

[blade]

Great digs guys ! I was wandering what these 2 bottles are ?

 

[Ratzilla]

Top one is a Hover master ink, lower was a round med of some sort, I don't recall the name, one of those 'somebody or other, druggist' bottles. I'll post pics of the stuff I got cleaned up later.