Abbey Cottages — Discovery!

It is my intention to write an account here of my discovery and subsequent exploration of a single period site located in Rainham, Essex, which dated from probably the early 19th-century and which terminated at some time in the early 20th century.  I will also endeavour to picture and catalogue all the finds made on the site over the time that I spent there because I hope that this will be a valuable resource for those interested in rural working class domestic life during the 19th Century. 

The site was capped during landscaping work later on in the 1990's and now lays beneath a great deal of extra imported soil. This protects it, but at the time this meant that no further work could take place and so I did not manage to retrieve much in the way of pottery. Nevertheless, what I did discover in the way of metallic objects tells a story that I think is necessary to record. 

Abbey Cottages once stood at Abbey Wood by Berwick Pond and were built upon a low gravel hillock set in marshy land close to the River Ingrebourne. When I stumbled upon the plot one day in 1993 the cottages had been long demolished. There was nothing visible to suggest that they had ever existed and only by following a trail of finds along the trackway which once led to them did I discover the evidence of them.

I was out on my bike prospecting for a new site to work on. I came to what I knew was a very old lake, thought that it looked a good place to search, and so I asked the fishery bailiff if I might and he gave permission. There were a few small fields to go at, but firstly, I tried detecting on the wide grass verge of the trackway that led from the main road along which anglers parked their cars. To my surprise, I did not locate lead fishing weights as I had expected to, but immediately made finds of late 18th and 19th-century date and these were mostly thimbles and 'dandy' buttons.

The trail of these finds petered out in the eastward direction but strengthened in the westward, and so I continued to follow it in that direction and eventually arrived at what appeared to be a gravel vehicle ramp ... 

To the left of this 'ramp' was a dense thicket of thorn bushes and to the right-hand side was a steep drop-off with a small field that was full of cattle about five or six feet below. It terminated at a roughly made barbed-wire fence beyond which I beheld a positively lunar landscape.  The ground had been churned up everywhere by the hooves of the cattle who clearly had free access to the area, and here and there were sorry looking spindly bushes nibbled to near extinction. 

I concentrated upon the ramp for the remainder of the afternoon continuing to find buttons — but they were not at all easy to dig. The ground was highly compacted and it was a lot of effort recovering anything. It was time well spent, though. For their age, they were all preserved in truly excellent condition and when an 18th-century Sheffield plate military button came along I was best pleased.

Officer's tunic button of the Essex Light Dragoons, 1794.
(See references at bottom of page)

At home, I pondered these novel discoveries and decided to return to the ramp the very next day. The recovery of finds dropped off fairly quickly, of course, and so I was forced into the thicket where I spent the rest of the morning struggling through it. However, the finds rate rose considerably when I found myself digging musket ball after musket ball and all spread across one small area.  I must have found ten before I found anything else (eventually amassing a collection of at least fifty of them) but I thought it to be well worth all the effort expended.  

I remember having to really struggle with one signal which was gotten at arm's length through a particularly prickly bramble bush. Finally, I got my trowel in, dug around through the thick leaf mould and managed to recover it from the topsoil. I expected yet another musket ball to be hiding inside the clod of hard-won soil clenched safely in my left hand but was surprised to see a truly lovely object fall into the palm of the right ...

Here was a find to get the heart racing — a Georgian fob seal! It was in such lovely condition, with traces of gilding in every recess and where the gilt had rubbed through to brass, the most gorgeous, lush dark-green patina. And it was complete, too! It still held its white stone intaglio, which was carved with a little crouched rabbit or hare. I thought to myself, that without any inscription that would give away the name of the erstwhile owner, that this animal must be a hare after all, and the loser — a Mr or Mrs Hare ... 

O'Hare, even! 

I pocketed this find and continued on, only to be arrested in my tracks a short while later by the worrying sight of a pair of approaching police officers. I really thought that I was about to be chucked off-site. Fortunately, it turned out that they had had other business to attend to which had led them nowhere fast and now they'd found an interest in what I was up to. We talked for some time about the finds that I had made, and curiously one seemed to know something (if not much!) about them.

I could not work this out for some time; bemused to be in conversation at such a level of understanding with a member of the constabulary — but what I had failed to apprehend until an introduction was made, was that this knowledgeable officer was a detectorist too and was also a member of my local detecting club. We'd already met in civvies!

People can look so utterly 'other' when in uniform, can't they?

References;

1. Dixon Noonan Webb

Raised in March 1794 by Montague Burgoyne, of Harlow, the Essex Light Dragoons saw service in Ireland at the time of the French invasion in 1798. It was disembodied sometime in 1799 and, to mark the occasion each officer and man who had served throughout the regiment’s existence was presented with a medal by their Commanding Officer. 

2. History of the Essex Yeomanry
In 1794, six Troops of the ‘Loyal Essex Regiment of Fencible Cavalry’ were formed from the Harlow area, to be later renamed ‘The Essex Light Dragoons’, against threats of a French invasion with landings on the Essex Coast. In 1797 the 1st Essex Yeomanry Cavalry Troop was raised, in Coopersale, followed by the Chelmsford Hundred Yeomanry: by 1798 there were fifteen such Yeomanry Cavalry Troops throughout Essex named, in many cases, after the village, district or landowner where they raised