Things ive found in the garden

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Jul 30, 2012
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westmidlands
Ive found another one today, a nodule of slag i think, its got copper pieces and silver metalic stuff that gives a medium hardness hacksaw and medium hardness file trouble.
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A couple of years ago i also found this, made from the almost pure clay found under the soil. Some sort of scraper, not fired properly, as when i tried firing the clay myself, it doesnt achieve the propper change unless you fire it with a blow torch.20180423_193402.jpg
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Im beginning to think that the area is some sort of iron age settlement. Any one else found anything ?
 

daveO

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Jun 22, 2009
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South Wales
Nothing that interesting. I live on a new build estate so my garden is full of stuff the builders buried. Maybe it'll be interesting in 200 years but right now digging broken breeze blocks and roof tiles out of every hole I dig is getting pretty annoying.
 
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Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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If you really suspect something of that age contact your local County Archaeologist and ask. They might want to see what you've found.

Not fully ceramicised clay can be either hearth fired (when we dig it here, in our wet soils, it crumbles and we call it rotten pot) or it can simply be pieces of a mould or the base of the hearth itself.

M
 
Jul 30, 2012
3,570
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westmidlands
This house dave is an end of the run, bricks and all everywhere, built in the 70s. If i could id make them pay.

The round thing is a nodule copper coloured, down and to the right is the silver filed patch.

I might just contact the the archaeologist toddy, thanks for the idea, i hadnt thought it may be a mould actually. I dug it out of tye ground which is permanently sodden, and i think its still got the soot on the surface from what ever they where doing, it doesnt appear broken and hasnt sucummed to rounding or softening. The clay is almost pure 1 ft down, green until it gets oxidised by the air and turns brown.

Is not tengu doing a degree in this sort of stuff ?
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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There is one other option....bombing debris.
It's surprising just how much some of it can look like early or pre industrial.
No idea about your neck of the woods, sorry.

M
 
Jul 30, 2012
3,570
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westmidlands
There is one other option....bombing debris.
It's surprising just how much some of it can look like early or pre industrial.
No idea about your neck of the woods, sorry.

M
Greenfield site until the 70s, that doesnt meant that they were not off course.

How about a meteorite ?
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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Anything big enough to ceramicise clay would have been spotted I reckon. Meteorites are usually Iron and Nickel, iirc.

If it were greenfield but has been used as the 'compound' end where stuff was stashed and stacked, they might have brought in a load of clinker to give them a kind of hard standing.

1970's were when the Natural Gas conversion really started to take hold, and lots of little town gas manufacturing sites disappeared (the local one is quarter of a mile from here. The big gasometer was one of the local 'signposts' since Victoria was on the throne) lot of stuff dispersed then, and among it tons and tons of clinker which got used up as a kind of hardcore. The nature walk running alongside our garden was the old mineral railway line to the gasworks and the path is just clinker, feet deep clinker.
 
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oldtimer

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Sep 27, 2005
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A friend of mine lived in an isolated cottage in the middle of farmland in deepest rural Cambridgeshire. He had an unbridled curiosity and a deep love of history. One day he took me for a walk in the fields around his house and pointed out to me the fairly large and extensive deposits of the sort of clinker you show. From his research, it turned out that today's peaceful and sparsely populated rural landscape has been and industrial centre in the early Medieval period.

It seems to me, therefore, that you could be onto something in your Iron Age settlement theory.
 
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Tengu

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Jan 10, 2006
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If its remains of an Iron age settlement, there would be pottery bits, yes?

There are a lot of greefield sites with industrial remains, I noted that too.

And clinker is handy stuff and gets about a bit
 
Jul 30, 2012
3,570
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westmidlands
Thanks Tengu. No noted potttery bits, just the thing I have found, but there is loads of of clay and stones and bricks from construction, which makes gardening a nightmare, I do not know what else I have missed, and put down as rubble rubbish stones etc. There is a nearby brook inbetween the hills so it maybe a little further down the hill, there must be a settlement around most places. I do not believe this would have been an ideal place for recent industrial, but as suggested it could be medieval or roman, or just stuff brought in during constr like Mary suggested.
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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Generally artefacts move downslope rather than up .....what's above your garden ?
Modern ploughing shatters things and harvesting and weathering drifts them in somewhat predictable patterns. "Field scatters" are often the first indication of an otherwise invisible site.

M
 
Jul 30, 2012
3,570
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westmidlands
Above the garden is a hill. There is a main triangulation point actually, one of the high points round the region, some 400 yards. The clay thing is almost definetly man made, and certainly from the rather problematic local clay, hard to fire hard to cast, very dense, full of iron, as I say it is still unoxidised. There are obviously the old romanmedieval towns of Warwick Coventry kenilworth Dudley, but nothing I know of close, although that means sod all though. There is not a history of mining locally that I know of. I have tried to contact an archeological society, I'll see what they say.
 
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Tengu

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Jan 10, 2006
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I do not know where you are.

Best maybe to look on the Historic Enviroment Record map (Geographic Information System) Your county council will have it on their site.

These will tell you all about your local archaeology...though some are...not good quality. (Being polite. But I am spoiled in Cornwall as they have a VERY GOOD one)

Tell us where you are and we can all have a look
 

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