I was born in Buckinghamshire in 1947. My wife and I were married in 1970 and lived our first few years of married bliss in Harefield, Middlesex.
We moved to a two bedroom detached house in Fleet, Hampshire, UK, in 1974. The house was built at the turn of the century approximately 1905 and needed total modernisation.
I was 27 and life for me rotated around my wife and my family, work (the finance provider) and a constant trial of trying to improve the house and garden to basically make it all habitable.
The garden wasn’t what you call large, but we tried to clear sufficient ground to grow as much produce for household consumption and to have a sufficiently large enough area for two children to safely play.
At the bottom of the back garden was a very large Privet hedge, (approx 10 foot high) which over the years had grown to the degree where it was taking over much needed space. We decided to prune it back so that I could safely cut it twice a year and basically make it manageable, but also in the words of the wife “to still maintain our privacy”.
Whilst clearing away all of the waste from the hedge cutting, we found sticking out of the ground at the base of the hedge, the tops and bottoms of bottles. Intrigued, the whole family started with various tools including a garden fork, a trowel and two seaside spades, bought for the children by the grandparents. (Also all of us wearing gloves) We all found this to be a total distraction from all of the other things that were beginning to become tasks rather than enjoyment. The sum total of our endeavours over a period of three days was four buckets of glass and stoneware that we didn’t know much about. Many times afterwards we often wondered why the whole hedge didn’t fall down.
Some of the items ended up displayed on the kitchen window sills. They looked very special with the sun twinkling through the imperfect glass, with its tears and bubbles. The children claimed some of the items and they ended up in their bedrooms. In fact some of them went into school for show and tell.
It was many months later we were out looking for a garden centre, when we spotted a sign outside of a house advertising antique bottles for sale. We knocked on the door and we explained about our finds, and we were duly ushered in to a room crammed full of Victorian and Edwardian household ephemera. It was mind blowing. Stone items, glass items with marbles, circular dishes with black and white writing all over them. This was truly a collection to make our collection look quite mundane. My imagination run riot, I had to find out more about them. This gents hobby was going out and digging old rubbish tips for pleasure and treasure. He had started digging in the late 1960`s.
I often wonder what happened to his wonderful collection after his death.
And So it all began. Best Regards Graham Dumbleton.
One last thing, I am not a writer, wordsmith or author, I have chosen to create this website because it has been a long term ambition of mine. I cannot change the way I write, and at my age it is far too late to try and do so. (Please enjoy and feel free to pass comment).