Vince here:
Geoff:
>just wondering - does anyone else experience/suffer the phenomenon of
finding lots and lots of complete pots thrown down in wells and latrines?
any explanation/theories out there? spring cleaning? out of fashion?<
As far as the pots go, Geoff, I'm sure the person who so unkindly just said
'perhaps the rope broke' was probably on the right lines: if you find
complete / almost complete pots in wells, the most likely damage for them
to have is a missing handle - I have visions of the rope suddenly
slackening, and amid much cursing, a single handle emerging dripping from
the well on the end of the rope!
With other stuff, the explanation could be much more complex.
Sometimes, the material is simply there because the well was a convenient
hole in which to dump it: I excavated a well at the back of the farm that I
used to live in, which had been filled with building material, old floor
slabs etc sometime in the late Victorian period, and the same goes for much
of the material recovered (for example) from the well at the RB temple at
Pagans Hill in Chew Stoke, Somerset, where material had been dumped during
the course of use of the well (including written material) and then later,
the physical fabric of the temple had gone down it, including carvings etc.
I've also seen the 'out-of-fashion' side of it: at Castle Farm, Marshfield
in Gloucestershire, a whole farmhouse had been cleared at some date in end
of the 18th century, and the stuff (glasses, ceramics, clay pipes etc)
dumped in layers in a disused cess-pit.
But then there is the more problematic kind. Put water where there are
large numbers of people, and they will throw coins into it. Even as, at
Wookey Hole caves near Wells, the water is an old mill-leat running at some
speed. For luck?
Have you tried the wells-and-spas mailing list - you may get more answers
there than you bargained for :-)
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