Vince Russett schrieb:
> 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!
>
will have to look - might be types that didn't have handles to begin with - and
most seem to be there when the wells were no longer used for water but as
latrines -
> 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.
>
possible, too - maybe just assuming too much in thinking people kept stuff
around and didn't go out to the shops and get a new set of china every few
years...
> 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 :-)
geoff carver
http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
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