Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: Aislingeanbeag on May 15, 2013, 12:50:40 PM
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Back in the 1960s whilst doing a survey on Newcastle quayside a derelict and flooded tidal cellar was discovered that was full of large bottles. obviously some cargo that was never shipped or were they an import that was stored?
The finder eventually rescued a truck load most of which were brown and a few the most beautiful deep blue.
I have a pair of the Blue ones and have often wondered were these Davidson or did they come from The Ellison glassworks?
The only marks are the '140' moulded on the base
15 1/2" high x 6" dia these are big!
Cheers
Dave
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Hello Dave, there appears to be a pressed '& C' in the centre of the base...can you have a close look and see if you can see the rest of the pressed words...it is just above the 140?
I keep going back and looking and sometimes the centre pressing looks like a 40 and sometimes an & C .... May we have more pics with the light from other angles please?
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They are remarkably similar in size and shape to bottles used for storing chemicals in labs., (certainly in the last century,) they were always called Winchesters.
While I have no idea of the age of your beautiful bottles, the name might help in a search. :)
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I have reexamined both bottles with a loupe and can confirm that the only markings are 140 however on the one pictured there is a trace of another partial flattened 140 below the obvious mould and on the other the 140 is moulded on top of another offset and flattened 140.
It seems that the mould was somehow moved during manufacture but that makes no sense to me.
The bottles are moulded with two side seams although the neck does not have any seam visible and neither does the base which suggests a two piece mould.
Whatever, the cellar had remained undisturbed for a great many years and was found when the local town planners were surveying the ancient quayside prior to the development plan being prepared which has lead to the current plethora of Bars, Nightspots and expensive apartments.l
Its location was kept a secret by the finders but they sold a load of bottles to work mates !
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The top of the bottle has a sort of ridge that looks as if it was designed to have a metal cap (like a beer-bottle one) on it - and if this is the case (which I am not at all sure about) this might assist with a date-line.
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This is not the most useful reply, but this link might lead you on to others and if you collect bottles the whole site might be of interest to bookmak anyway, always assuming you haven't already got it.
http://www.glassbottlemarks.com/numbers-on-base-of-bottles-containers/
I am trying to find out what date Winchesters went from having either corks, glass stoppers or crown bottle tops, to being screw thread tops, because the Winchesters we had in the dispensary, including amber, clear and blue glass, were all screw thread tops and that goes back to the mid 1960's, so I anticipate your bottles will be older than that, as you say they were discovered around then. I did wonder if the '140' was a date, Jan 1940?
Anyway hopefully, it all gives us something to carry on the search with... :)
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I love these blue bottles - what a fab colour! I have two dark brown ones with a slightly different neck/top and which have their stoppers in still. Both mine are marked P322 S 80 38 UGB on the base
http://yobunny.org.uk/gallery1/displayimage.php?pid=484
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Most of the 'Cellar' trove that survived the Tyne flowing in and out twice each day did not have corks or bungs.
Many were broken or cracked and it was those that had stoppers that were damaged by years of bobbing about.
There are traces of cork ahering inside one neck as I must own up to never having fully cleaned the insides.
The Tyne filth was roughly washed out and a little bleach was added to the last couple of rinses as I recall and they have sat on a shelf for 40 + years.
The neck shape has a taper inside to allow for a cork and although I agree there is a lip however I think it is for a wire cage and not a crown cap!
Here are two pictures that show the lip and the back-lit colour that highlights the crud still within!
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Interesting thought that 140 could be a date however I tend to think that it is more probably a pattern no.
The idea of changing a mould every month in order to record a date somehow seems overkill for what was essentially a disposable mass produced product.
About 15 years ago I was in charge of some alterations to a former chemist in Brechin and arrived on site one day to find our digger driver clearing out the cellar through a hole in the rear wall with a mini digger.
That cellar was also full of bottles!
I still have a couple of crates out in the shed so I am now going to do some research on markings.
Unfortunately the digger broke many fine and rare specimens but I managed to retain a couple of hundred that have been disposed of to various collectors. Those that remain are mostly Brown but if I find anything I will report back.
Cheers
Dave
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It might be the machine number. They don't look that old and they certainly look machine made. Perhaps they were made at the Alloa Glass Works, which isn't so far away and used to and still does produce huge quantities of bottles.
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They are definitely moulded but they are not finished like most machine bottles I have seen!
Two side seams are clearly seen but no seams at the base and the neck appears to be a separate piece of the mould.
I must investigate how bottles were made !
The cellar in Newcastle was probably untouched from before WW2 and was in an area where most of the buidings were Victorian or older! So I will provisionally date to between the wars!
Newcastle upon Tyne quayside being within 5 miles of Davidsons and Sowerby I would have thought is unlikely to house a store for Scottish bottles and even Sunderland and South Shields are less than 20 miles away!
Certainly Alloa may have figured in the Brechin find but I am no closer to identifying bottle makers for any of our collection.
Cheers
Dave
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Neither of them made bottles to my knowledge, though Bagley did. Alloa was the first mechanised bottle making factory in Britain and was making 8 million bottles a year by 1914 (Scotland's Glass: 400 hundred years of glassmaking 1610-2010, Airlie and Blench)
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I have a lot to learn!
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Not forgetting that you mentioned this might have been stock that was imported and in storage, not necessarily stock waiting to be exported.
If this was the case, which country might they have been made in?
Having said that, with so many glass manufacturers in the country, would they import glass?
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I just happened across this site, which might be worth a browse through too:
http://www.antiquebottles.co.za/Rarity.htm
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Well Anne, you certainly never 'just happen' upon anything ordinary, do you?? What a site, with so much information...a must for us to bookmark.
Interestingly, the site is South African, and the majority of the bottles had contained British products.
So Dave, it could be that your two bottles were in storage waiting to be exported after all... it means you are probably correct thinking they were from a fairly local British bottle manufacturer.
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Very interesting site!
My interest in bottles is growing the more I read and I am now regretting the sale of my 'Interesting' examples over the years.
Heading into the garden now to pressure wash two big crates of leftovers hauled out yesterday!
cheers
Dave
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I like poking around in obscure corners of t'internet Rosie, you never know what you might find there! ;)
Dave, glad you liked it too. I think I have some more bottle sites linked from GlassLinks too - see sig below for GlassLinks site URL.