The Incredible Story of the Artefact I found in this hole! Mudlarking the Thames with Nicola White

look can you see what's been revealed here the pipe's final resting place look at that a little pipey hole isn't that great so it's a victorian pipe got a little bit of decoration on it redates to 1840s ish mid 19th century anyway very nice very nice little find i like that i'm take a photo of that what's this oh i found these before i don't know what they are you might know little brass things um let me go and wash it and show you you might be able to tell me what its purpose was oh look there's a spanner here an old spanner stuck in the mud look at that very nice i don't think i need that i have enough i'm trying to de-clutter a little bit so i'm not going to take things that i really don't need and i don't need an old spanner yeah if i give this a little rinse off in here look you can see why it looked potentially exciting the little shiny bit poking out and i can use it in something i'm sure interesting shape ladies and gentlemen can you see what i'm looking at just down here now that looks good doesn't it don't you think so let's have a look i nearly stepped right on top of it look see my footprint there now oh my goodness you know it's that moment when i'm is that going to be it is there going to be a bowl on it or is that going to be it is it just going to be a stem i don't know i don't know oh i don't know oh do you know what i think oh no i think there might be a bowl under there i think oh yes there is oh that is great for a minute i thought it might end there so where does this bit end then okay that ends there let's leverage it out gently but i can see that there's a pattern on there of sorts at least oh yes there is there is oh my gosh yeah there is it's that lovely kind of scaly design i recently showed you some of those in my video and they had a maker's mark on them this one doesn't look like it does so maybe it was made by somebody different i found a few of these made by virtual and this is very similar but it doesn't have a maker on it but look isn't that pretty that's very pretty isn't it excellent right i have just come across something potentially exciting see if you can guess look it's a bottle eroding out of the mud but it looks as if it could be because of this little bit here it looks as if it could be a cod bottle doesn't it oh oh dear the question is what lies beneath is it intact or is it broken let's take a look oh i don't know it feels like it might be broken because it's very sort of it's feeling rather light for it to be whole let's see this makes a change from a pipe extraction doesn't it oh look it's not broken my goodness so i really wasn't expecting that i was not expecting to have a whole mini cod bottle extraction oh my goodness that is a treat and look isn't it lovely it's it's quite cute and small i just think it's been in there for years and years and the great thing is that it has a name on it oh my goodness can it get any better can my morning get any better than this right let's go and wash it off this is very special this is very special oh my goodness i'm just on my way down to wash this beautiful bottle and look down here look down here that is an intact pipe late 19th century fully intact it's even got the little bit on the end there oh my goodness what a treat oh this is this is a great morning this is a brilliant morning okay let's go down and continue to wash this beautiful little cod bottle off right on there we've got gp weaver plumstead and goods bottle for goods bottle for something w rylands barnsley that is such a gorgeous bottle and i've actually got a weaver bottle plumstead which isn't a cod bottle i'll have to get it out and we can have a look at the have a look at it again compare them and i'll do a bit of research on gp weaver that is just so exciting as you know i love researching a name beautiful beautiful thank you river thames it's quite a low tide today so certain parts of the foreshore are being revealed that are generally out of reach look there's another little bottle here and another one here a gorgeous little stoneware bottle a little ink little pork pie that's really special and also let's have a look at this what's i've just spotted down here i'm not sure about that beautiful bottles though well as i said it's a really low tide and so things are being uncovered that have been covered up for a very long time and i've just seen something over nine eight seven six five four three two one that has probably laid here for a long time undiscovered trust me you just can't undiscover it yeah it's been there for a while hasn't it right i'll pop that in my bag and i'll take that to the police later on if you find weapons like this on the foreshore you do need to take them to a police station now what is this what is it whatever it is it's very delicate it looks like a little bit of decorative metal it's very very delicate so i shall pop that in my bag take it home and clean it up so just seen this now what's this that certainly looks like it was something once doesn't it there's certainly a little sweet spot of bottles here look it's a pepsi cola bottle it's quite a nice old one isn't it that's gorgeous now here's a funny looking little bottle it's a french one i think i'll take that what does it say up there p a m p r a something okay find out a little bit more about that i'm just having a little scrape around here there are so many pins tiny little pins loads of them popping out everywhere see and there's also lots of tiny weenie little bits of metal and i just spotted this little bit here look isn't that adorable a tiny little thing so many weird little bits of metal that's another one what's this oh look it's a little offering we've got an elephant on there let's have a little look around here that's an old button look at the shank on that the 18th early 19th century i should think right well i am ready to go home now it's been a super low tide today and here are my treasures so i'm going to go home and find out a little bit more about all of these objects and then we'll meet up and i'll tell you what i found out i've just realized that this is a little lion thank you very much for watching and thank you for accompanying me on that little excursion along the river thames from shore in london i hope that wherever you are all is well in your world and welcome to my studio i'm going to say a few words about the objects which i found during that particular outing and i'm going to start with my absolute favorite find which is this beautiful intact cod bottle here it's rarer and rarer to find these intact because children especially used to love to break them to get the marble out as you can see the marble is still in this one used to seal the bottle and it's a really lovely small one as well i've always thought that it's quite strange that these bottles were made to look so aesthetically pleasing with the embossed writing and the thick glass and yet there was only essentially a tiny little bit of mineral water in them and it would have taken a few seconds to glug it back i suppose some of them were meant for refilling but obviously this one just ended up in the mud drink and just tossed it in the mud and then over 100 years later i came around and found it and so it's got gp weaver on it from plumstead so who was gp weaver well this is where it gets interesting because gp weaver had his finger in a lot of pines and i'm going to tell you about that in a minute but this is really the magic of mudlarking you find something in the mud and you just never know where it's going to take you and that is exactly the case with this bottle because gp weaver oh by the way i have actually found a weaver bottle before about a year ago made by the same person so this is weavers of plumstead slightly a later bottle right so gp weaver who was he well his name was george pike weaver and he was born in 1838 and as well as being a licensed victualer and a pub hotel owner a mineral water manufacturer he also have something to do with a rather famous football club so if you are an arsenal fan you may well be very interested about this now sometime just before 1890 george weaver bought some land in plumstead and he made a huge football stadium and he then leased out this stadium to the arsenal football club who were at the time not a professional club and the stadium was called which actually is the motto of kent and it has been for centuries and this was the first proper stadium of the arsenal football club they were there from 1890 to 1893 now it was very very popular when they moved in there lots and lots of people came to see the football it was very exciting apparently ladies could go in free the men had to pay and yeah people used a throng in there and everyone had a great time watching the football then in 1891 i think it was arsenal became professional and they attracted a lot more attention and a lot more people of course wanted to come and see the game so george weaver put the rent up from 200 pounds per year to 350 pounds and at that time arsenal could not afford the rent as well as this they fell out with him because he also tried to take over the club so by 1893 arsenal left the stadium george weaver was left with this empty stadium which he did manage to rent out i think for another year but then after that he finally sold the land and it was used to be developed and houses were built on it and there was not a lot left of invicta stadium now i've got a lot of this information thanks to a very good website called arsenalhistory.com and one of the things they mentioned was that in plumbstead in this particular area there are still some of the original concrete terracing seats that used to be there in the stadium there are still some there that's all that's left of it now i mean if you if you look at a map and there is a map on that website i couldn't use it i'll mention it right if you look at a map it's just nothing but houses but apparently there are some of the original terracings there from over 130 years ago so i want to go and see if i can find them and as it happens i have my son angelo here today and he is doing some painting and so i'm going to go see if he football club's first home hello angelo angelo how are you getting on good very white yes it's all white yes exactly very appropriate anyway um angelo would you be able to come with me for it shouldn't be longer than an hour i want to see if you can go and find the old invicta stadium remains yes the the concrete yeah benches for the vehicle yeah the stands the stands the stands okay are you up for that yes brilliant yeah thank you let's do it so here we are at hector street and apparently on the intersection of hector street and mineral street is where we may possibly be able to find the remains of the old invicta stadium where our used to play back in the 19th century so let's go and see if we can find it so thank you very much to dinesh who has very kindly allowed us into his garden to see this which is so historically exciting these steps here are the last remaining or some of the last remaining bits of evidence of the old arsenal ground invicta where arsenal played from 1890 to 1893 and george pike weaver the producer of the mineral water from this bottle was the landlord of arsenal here in the invicta stadium and which of course is now completely covered with houses but you know just to think that people used to sit here back in the late 19th century to watch arsenal play it's just quite special i mean all the the noise and the excitement and the crowd cheering and here we are over 100 years later in dinesh's back garden with what can only be described as something which is almost like a historical monument especially for people who love football so i'm bask in this for a while and imagine the cheers and everything because of course it wasn't long after arsenal came to invicta that they became professional and then stingy old george pike weaver wanted to put the rent up for the stadium and they couldn't afford it at that point so angela you're a football fan how do you feel standing on these stadium steps where so many people would have been watching football back in the late 19th century so normally you'd instead of sitting everyone would be standing so you could have had two rows of people standing on each each step um a lot of excitement probably a lot of uh a lot of falling on top of each other if if uh if there was a last minute goal yeah but this uh no it's definitely interesting to see the history of brilliant yeah i love it so isn't it amazing that a small bottle plucked from the thames mud can take us on a journey to learn about the history of a very prominent footballer here in the uk and now this little bottle has been back to the stadium stadium that belonged to george pike weaver who also created the mineral water in this bottle maybe george p weaver even sat on the bench that i was sitting on well maybe that's a little bit far-fetched i know but he could well have sold his mineral water to all the people who came to watch arsenal play and he could perhaps even have provided water at halftime to the players although he sounds like a bit of a skinflint so that was excellent and i'd love to say a really big thank you to dinesh and his family for letting myself and angelo in and taking us out into their garden where they have a really wonderful piece of football history sitting there thank you very much dinesh and of course arsenal are now based in north london although their roots are very much from south london you can read up all about the history of arsenal football club if you're interested in that on the arsenal football site or at that website i mentioned the arsenal history dot com so that was a lot of fun and i've put angelo back to work now thank you angelo thanks very much back to work now please so having looked at that marvelous piece of history let's just quickly run through some of the other finds so the first one i'm going to show you is this here for some reason when i first took it out of the mud i didn't see that there's a lion's face on it it's very delicate there is a lion's face there now i put this on twitter and it was identified very very quickly it actually comes from a fastener of a victorian or possibly even earlier and i know they also have them um later as well but i'm pretty sure this one's from a victorian um police policeman's cape so it would have been a fastener it would have been one on this side and then one on that side too with a little chain and it would have been yes adorning a cape so you can only wonder how this ended up in the mud was there some kind of scuffle was he chasing somebody um who knows but a lovely piece of history i also want to mention the gun the gun how did i forget gun they're talking police and crime now let's talk about the gun which i have of course handed into the police very important to hand weapons into the police and thank you very much to my friends graham and david too who helped me identify the gun apparently a pk walter gun of james bond fame it's probably quite old i think it could date back to the 1930s 1940s um of course i know many of you out there are probably pretty good on weaponry so you can correct me if you like but it certainly dates back a while you can see that from the little barnacles and everything that's going on it of course you can't help wondering how it ended up in the river who threw it in there was a crime committed does it come from the war uh who knows we'll never know but apparently james bond had a gun very similar and as i've been getting into my um old ads and commercials recently i was trying to find something related to james bond and i did come up with something so i'm going to play it to you now gift set for every assignment this one packs the full line including 007 aftershave hair dressing and cologne that's 007 for the license to kill women when you lastly i'm going to mention the pipe here it's another lovely pipe now what i realized when i got home was that there would have been a maker on here but it's simply been worn away and i do have two others like that exactly the same slightly shorter and they're all made by the same maker and it's a greenwich clay pipe maker his name is joseph virtual he obviously liked that particular design and he has a lovely signature there along one side of the pipe and then the name where he made it on the other which is greenwich of course and as always a great pleasure to find signs of historic clay pipe makers in the mud and including joseph virtual this one here's quite nice you can see where it's been smoked it's completely black actually i think there's some ash in there so it's funny isn't it all these people um they're long gone but because their names are embossed on the bottle or on the clay pipe they come to light again and then we can find out all about them and it sort of brings their stories back to life again doesn't it that i always find that really very very magical um i don't think there's anything else the only thing i was going to mention right at the beginning i picked up a little bit of metal i couldn't actually find the particular piece that i found but it's very similar to this i don't think it was this bit i don't think it might even be this but i don't know what it was for i found a few of these over the years do you know this is anyone um oh yes and of course there's this bottle here as well not as old as george pike weaver's bottle this is in fact a bit of a vintage the 1950s or so um pamperin bottle although it's french so it's jude three and i did find a few old vintage adverts for this it's been there quite a while it also has so ladies and gentlemen i think that is it in terms of the finds that i want to talk about that outing so thank you very much again for watching i do want to mention that the event schedule is now out for the totally terms festival which takes part for all of the month of september it celebrates everything to do with the river thames and there's loads and loads of events there's choirs there's walks there's talks there's um there's workshops there's online things there's virtual events there's actually either in-person events there's all sorts of things going on so there's things for everybody children adults old and young and there will be london i'm doing the first weekend which is the third and fourth of september and the second weekend the 10th and 11th of september and i'm also doing a talk on the 10th of september it's free and so if you are in london you simply just need to book your place on the thames festival trust website i'll put that link in the description to this video and also on the screen here and if you go there you can go in and have a look at some of the events and there's loads and loads it's going to be a really fun time and i'm going to try and go to lots of them myself and just really make the most of all these things going on around our amazing hotels so on that note i want to wish you all a wonderful week ahead and thank you very much of course for your comments thank you for your emails and your support thank you so much to everybody who has donated and will continue to donate to my ko-fi account i truly truly appreciate it and i've sent you all lots of love from here in london take care be safe be happy and see you again very soon hey angelo have you finished painting then yeah well don't you want to sing a song for the credits not in the best attire really to sing a song but i'll i'll send you a demo that you can put in the credits and and it's called down by the river as well it's only a demo as well but it's badass love it okay great all right then well thanks very much thank you and thanks for your painting job yes it looks like you've painted yourself as well yeah that's been brilliant okay safe journey home bye