Major building works to our house over the past year has meant lots of digging. Not so much of the gardening variety, but of the foundation and soakaway type. One unexpected result has been finding some real treasures and snippets of social history in our soil.
My son was delighted when this clay pipe was dug up. Apparently they are quite common so we won’t be reporting the find to the local records office. It is now our clay pipe giving rise to lots of discussions about who used to live here and what the land was used for. A headless tin soldier was also found close to the house.
So we have now completed our own time capsule to give those in the future some clues as to who why and what lived where we do . We have buried it, not in the garden, but under the floorboards of the new extension. The arrival of our new wood floor this week meant that the burial was now or never.
We finished up with a rather eclectic mix of objects chosen by a 7 yr old with a little help.
Coins – Because treasure always has coins.
A girl’s ring – for the same reason as above.
Lego - representing a toy of this time.
A drawing of the house - undertaken by my son with much love.
A Photo of last year’s Royal Wedding.
A Map of the 2012 Cycle race showing the route through our local town.
All packaged up in my grandmothers 1950s metal tin. Note the clay pipe and soldier are not returning to the ground – far too precious.
It is a strange feeling undertaking something you will never know the end result of - be it in 100 years time, 1,000 years time or never it’s a great way to start discussing history with my son. It was more difficult than I thought it would be to choose items to include in the time capsule. Would love to know what you would choose and why.
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