SergioWilkins
Well-Known Member
Hey everyone,
My digging partner Kyle and I finally had a chance to get out for a dig this year, and dug our first actual privy in a couple years today. It seems like what little we have managed to turn up the past few years has been from non-stop dump digging, but no privy opportunities have presented themselves until today!
There is a large open construction site here in London, Ontario that I had been eying up for a while. Three buildings had been demolished on the site earlier this year, all three of them built sometime in the 1930s. However, the site is in an older part of London, so I figured something older must be in the backyard to be had! Since I've been away all summer, I did not have a chance to check into the site until just recently. When I drove by today on my way home from my girlfriend's place, I couldn't help but notice that some work had been done - a layer of soil scraped off the top of the entire site! So, I pulled over, and starting walking the perimetre. In the very back edge of the site, a swath of black soil had been scraped up, and lo and behold! Bottle shards, horseshoes, and big clumps of ash were poking out of the soil left, right and centre! So, I decided to talk to a couple of the neighbours to see if they knew what was going on, and perhaps get a sense of the severity of the local law enforcement and their monitoring of the site. Fortunately, as it turns out, the site has not been closely monitored since the building foundations were filled in, so the neighbours I talked to told me I could go right ahead and tuck through the fence to dig to my heart's content! They were able to keep a secret, so I was on for a good bottle dig!
I grabbed the probe from the trunk of my car (always handy!), and set to work trying to find pits. Crunch, crunch! Within less than 10 minutes I had located three probable pits in the dark-soiled patch along the back of the site. I could feel that privy-digging adrenaline running through my veins! I had no idea of the age of the pits, but near to one of them on top of the ground I located a large chunk from an early aqua "Carling Lager Beer" blob from here in London. I wish this one was intact!
So, I headed home to get my digging partner Kyle and eat some supper before returning. We were back at the site by 5:30 PM. Kyle tapped into one pit, while I started on the second. Within minutes Kyle had established the pit's late, 1940s era trash and had abandoned it (pits don't get deep enough around here to find any older stuff towards the bottom - 6 feet is about the maximum we have seen). The pit I was working on seemed to be producing some older stuff, so we would up digging it to the bottom. The third pit seemed to be nothing but rocks, ash, and a few sparse bottle shards.
The loose, sandy soil around here makes for easy digging, so it was a pretty leisurely 2 hour dig as we cleaned that pit out. Mostly broken ironstone, but a few other interesting tidbits came out. I'll attach a few pictures of the pieces we found. This first one is of the heartbreaker Carling beer, as I found it. Just sticking up in the air for everyone to see. The rest of the bottle was nearby in numerous pieces, but too many for me to bother reconstructing. Oh well!
My digging partner Kyle and I finally had a chance to get out for a dig this year, and dug our first actual privy in a couple years today. It seems like what little we have managed to turn up the past few years has been from non-stop dump digging, but no privy opportunities have presented themselves until today!
There is a large open construction site here in London, Ontario that I had been eying up for a while. Three buildings had been demolished on the site earlier this year, all three of them built sometime in the 1930s. However, the site is in an older part of London, so I figured something older must be in the backyard to be had! Since I've been away all summer, I did not have a chance to check into the site until just recently. When I drove by today on my way home from my girlfriend's place, I couldn't help but notice that some work had been done - a layer of soil scraped off the top of the entire site! So, I pulled over, and starting walking the perimetre. In the very back edge of the site, a swath of black soil had been scraped up, and lo and behold! Bottle shards, horseshoes, and big clumps of ash were poking out of the soil left, right and centre! So, I decided to talk to a couple of the neighbours to see if they knew what was going on, and perhaps get a sense of the severity of the local law enforcement and their monitoring of the site. Fortunately, as it turns out, the site has not been closely monitored since the building foundations were filled in, so the neighbours I talked to told me I could go right ahead and tuck through the fence to dig to my heart's content! They were able to keep a secret, so I was on for a good bottle dig!
I grabbed the probe from the trunk of my car (always handy!), and set to work trying to find pits. Crunch, crunch! Within less than 10 minutes I had located three probable pits in the dark-soiled patch along the back of the site. I could feel that privy-digging adrenaline running through my veins! I had no idea of the age of the pits, but near to one of them on top of the ground I located a large chunk from an early aqua "Carling Lager Beer" blob from here in London. I wish this one was intact!
So, I headed home to get my digging partner Kyle and eat some supper before returning. We were back at the site by 5:30 PM. Kyle tapped into one pit, while I started on the second. Within minutes Kyle had established the pit's late, 1940s era trash and had abandoned it (pits don't get deep enough around here to find any older stuff towards the bottom - 6 feet is about the maximum we have seen). The pit I was working on seemed to be producing some older stuff, so we would up digging it to the bottom. The third pit seemed to be nothing but rocks, ash, and a few sparse bottle shards.
The loose, sandy soil around here makes for easy digging, so it was a pretty leisurely 2 hour dig as we cleaned that pit out. Mostly broken ironstone, but a few other interesting tidbits came out. I'll attach a few pictures of the pieces we found. This first one is of the heartbreaker Carling beer, as I found it. Just sticking up in the air for everyone to see. The rest of the bottle was nearby in numerous pieces, but too many for me to bother reconstructing. Oh well!
] Bet it felt good to start finding the older glass!
