Herald - Issue 424

Page 18 • The HERALD • 2nd June 2022 v PROUD TO BE PART OF THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1994 v FOR QUALITY AND SERVICE • DOMESTIC AND COMMERCIAL WORKS • DISABLED FACILITIES Hardley Industrial Estate, Hythe, Southampton Telephone: (023) 8084 9999 Fax: (023) 8084 9999 • Mobile: 07836 525286 E stablished 1955 ALL ASPECTS OF ELECTRICAL WORK UNDERTAKEN • Full Rewires • New Circuits • Consumer Unit Replacements • Test and Inspection • Landlord Certification • Smart Homes • Central Heating Controls 023 8089 0932 or 07534 343631 www.alnelectrical.co.uk info@alnelectrical.co.uk Kitchen & Bathroom Showroom with free design service Tel: 023 8084 3787 Email: showroom@pcbuildingsupplies.co.ukWeb : www.pcbuildingsupplies.co.uk J Webber Gas and Heating Services Installations, Alterations, Breakdowns and Maintenance Tel: 07825 018023 Email: webberjim77@gmail.com Send your local news to The Editor, The Herald, 2 High Street, Hythe SO45 6AH or email: editor@herald-publishing.co.uk DIGGING UP THE PAST by Robin Somes, Fawley & Blackfield Memories At the southern corner of Badminston Common lies Dean’s Bridge, or Dingley Dell as it’s better known to most, where the footpath enters the woodland and crosses Mopley stream. Here are the remnants of a few ancient cottages, a well, and an air-raid shelter, still standing. Somewhere among the thick laurels sits an old midden heap, lled with the wreckage of human occupation. Back in the early 1970’s, Gerry Lawrence would dig there for all sorts of treasures, and occasionally drop in on his way home, to show them to my mother. Gerry was a remarkable character, marching to the beat of his own drum, who surely deserves a story of his own one day, but for now we’ll think of the many bottles, pots, bits of crockery and stoneware jam jars he unearthed. All of this kindled my own interest in digging up painted and plain. Terra cotta tile and owerpot. Plastic, probably from some toy I had in childhood. Fire-cracked ints, broken glass, and quartz pebbles worn smooth by the sea, aeons ago. Oyster and winkle shells. Buttons, brass curtain rings, and tiny beads. Clay pipe bowls and stems, and a Bakelite cigarette holder. Hand-made nails, and carbon rods from old batteries. Gill-covers and vertebrae of a large sh, probably a mullet. And nally, the shin bone of a pig. In his book “ In Small Things Forgotten ”, the American anthropologist James Deetz writes that objects such as these “allow us to see into the past not through the writings of people who are communicating their particular view of the world, but through human actions that affected the material world in a broad and more general way” . All these objects give a glimpse into the everyday lives of those everyday people who lived here, maybe 200 years ago. I still worry about the shin bone of the pig, though. Bottles and jars by Robin Somes the past, and I soon found my own garden was just as rich a source of material. For one thing, the surrounding hedgerow is reinforced in places by a collection of old bedsteads, and even a spike-harrow, which all came in useful in the nal phase of their lives, to block up an awkward hole in the hedge. Like the midden at Dean’s Bridge, the earthen bank surrounding my property is similarly lled with old bottles, crockery and other detritus, and so too is the vegetable patch. I have been cultivating the patch for around 35 years now, and every season I dig it over, a new crop of oddities comes up. A fragment of a porcelain teacup, decorated with roses and a gold rim. Other shards of ceramic, Car Boot Sale A Car Boot Sale takes place at Memorial Car Park in Totton on Sunday 5th June from 9am to 12noon (weather permitting). No booking is required. Any size car £5 and the area is hard standing. Please bring your own tables. Use of the community centre toilets, some free parking available. For more information please call: 023 8086 3769 or: 07503 484237 or just turn up.