Rubbish

News of the year so far . I had one of psychic moments the other night were i suddenly thought that i must call someone i know by the name of roger.I also sensed there was a sense of urgency to call this person up.I get this all the time where either someone is going to call or i must call them.I can also tell who is calling before i answer without prior knowledge of a call being expected etc.also i always know when and when not especially if it is a spam or nuisance call.Its like an inbuilt spam filter.also i can tell if someone is in the area as i tune into their presence somehow plus a lot of other wierd things that i wont go into now as i must not digress.

Anyway there was a postcard posted through the letterbox somewhat unexpectedly.I read the message on the back of it.It was from roger who had lost my number so please get in touch asap.I was surprised but not surprised at the same time for the above reasons.The message also read : " brighton tip found but unnapproachable " .So i called up Roger who said a victorian landfill/rubbish site has been uncovered very recently on a construction site that is fairly central.There are problems with access to this site to dig for various reasons such as other diggers breaking in and digging for bottles.There have been fights there and one individual was caught breaking in etc and has been sent to prison so i am told.There are ruoughly half a dozen other diggers apart from myself who are aware of this site apart from myself.We are all desperate to dig this site asap and i have been chosen to talk to the developer and set up a meeting to arrange official access.This is because i am good at that sort of thing plus i have connections with the local council.i can talk my way into anywhere usually.The site is council land and the construction is to build a rubbish incinerator so its a council project therefore it is easy access for me because i am connected to a local museum house that researches local history that is in turn connected to the museum.

Back to the site in question: first of all the builders were just smashing all the bottles so i dont even want to know what was lost there.Then the break inns alerted the builder to the fact that these items have a value.This of course made the builder more interested in them so the builder kept all the bottles instead of smashing them and has so far accumulated over a thousand bottles and pots that he is now selling slowly on Ebay . One example fetched 230 quid.I also believe 3 very valuable stoneware pub flasks with names of old brighton pubs were sold privatly too.I will meet with the seller with the bottles as i daresay i will buy a few of them and the seller is obviously local so this way i get to see everything before they appear on Ebay and are sold.I also would like to photograph and record what i dont buy .The seller will let me do this for a couple of boxes of beer i should think.

Back to the site again : The site is cut in two by a narrow lane.The incinerator is being built on the smaller narrow plot of land.On the opposite side of the lane is the much larger plot of land.The whole site was a tip and an Abbatoir in victorian times.Right now the land is a brownfield site that sooner rather than later will be earmarked for redevelopment.This is what i am really interested in .I would like to secure digging rights in the first instance and to incorporate a research project on social history during that time that would involve Brighton Museum and the Regency Town House that i am involved in.This is so we can dig systematically rather like an archeological site so that everything is recorded and photographed with the potential of a permanent display within the museum of these items.Plus also what i can keep myself for my collection and then perhaps auction the rest of the more boring stuff off on Ebay to raise funds for various projects that have stalled at the town house due to lack of funding for example.


The general opinion of rough dates of this site date it to C1830 but i have yet to see evidence of this myself . The evidence that i have seen dates items to roughly the 1870s perhaps slightly earlier.To find a tip containing landfill from the 1830s is really the equivalent of finding gold . Almost unprecedented as bottles were handmade individually then and are extremely hard to find and are very valuable.


So it is all very exciting as no one has located the main rubbish tip in brighton until this came to light.As a final point this landfill site was full up by about 1890 so it was coverd over but the site continued to be the Corporation rubbish depot to this day. In 1890 ish the site contained a "Destructor" that is marked on the map of 1890.I will have to find out more about what that was but its name explains quite a lot in itself.