Digging for Treasure

Well, the real reason wasn't really digging for treasure but for storage space. The Chauffeur and daughter#2 spent a few days digging up the ground from under the floor next to our front door. They lifted the mat, removed some wooden slats and got to it.

Daughter#2 loves this kind of thing and got stuck in, well, it involves mess and dirt.

A surprising, though it shouldn't have been surprising, part of this was finding more than just earth and stones. We are used to finding bits of old pottery and things from our garden, assuming they used it as filler to go under the soil, and also from the time the bathroom was added on to the house, it being very late Victorian and not having been built with one (we have no idea where their 'waste water' went, I've used quotation marks there so you know what I mean, lol) and the builders just threw all the broken bricks down into the garden space as well as lots of other bits.

These things include bits of pottery, the ends of clay pipes, broken bottles which the chauffeur believes were used for medicine, and the one item which daughter#2 is the most creeped out by, a child's shoe.

Now, it could be a doll's shoe, though it would have been a fairly large doll, and we don't know where the other one is, adding to the mystery and also creepyness. I wondered if it was a ritual thing, a left over Pagan idea to show this is a home and to keep out danger, a bit like horseshoes being attached to doors. I'm sure I've heard of shoe's being thought to show the family heath or home, somewhere.

We'll never know. in the meantime we have to keep the shoe out of sight of daughter#2 as it really does disturb her, and to be honest the chauffeur and I too.

Here's another photo showing daughter#2 having a good old dig around with a trowel. It's finished now and is being used for some of the Chauffeur's bits of diy stuff, such as paint pots, varnish sandpaper - you get the idea. Very useful as it was in the bathroom before, taking up space.

 

                              The type of soil there was under there, not soil so much as rubble really.

 

                               A piece of pottery, don't know what it was but it must have been nice. 

The broken bottle which may have come from an Apothecary shop.

A collection of some of the items which were found inluding That Shoe!