Hi Oceans,
When I moved in and started to return the garden to a cottage garden, I found quite a few bottles, ginger beer, beer and so on, and some still in very nice condition. Probably the same as over there, before they had refuse collections everything got either burned or buried!! We've amassed quite a collection over the years. The strangest, and funniest, was when I decided to rip up and replace the floorboards in an upstairs room. After lifting the tatty carpet by the chimney breast I saw what I took to be a large asbestos section recessed into the floor where the open fire would once have been. You can imagine that I felt a little panic overcome me. However, after donning more protective clothing than a Chernobyl worker, and pasting plastic sheets over the offending 'asbestos' I cut the boards around it and lifted the whole thing out. The first indication that it perhaps wasn't asbestos was the sheer weight. It turned out to be a large slab of stone, almost resembling a headstone, with Wm. Stone and the name of the village engraved on it. A bit of research showed that three Stone brothers, one called William, lived in the village back in the 1850's roughly about the time when that part of the building was added. Absolutely no monetary value to the thing but it was a sort of link to the past. I perhaps should have replaced it when I put down the new boards, but it has found a nice home in the garden.
