You never know what may be laying at the bottom of a river… (file) (Image: Getty)
A treasure hunter recently discovered a “time capsule” harking back to Victorian .
While scouring England’s riverbeds for coins and artefacts, Jane Eastman – @myordinarytreasure on – stumbled upon the unexpected find, a green glass bottle trapped in the silt.
In a video snippet of her expedition, viewers see Jane raking over the spot as she declares: “This is freaky. That’s got to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
It soon becomes apparent that her discovery contains pickles, preserved for more than a century. Once warm and dry at home, Jane inspected the relic with greater scrutiny and identified an inscription on the bottle cap: “WandD Harvest Dowgate Dock London”.
She penned on her post: “120+ year old bottle of pickles ‘fresh’ from the river! Well, you’ve got to love a time capsule, but I certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be in the form of a 120-odd-year-old jar of pickles, discovered completely intact, still corked and with embossed topper.
:
“The company name is W & D Harvest of Dowgate Dock, Upper Thames Street, London and although I can’t find the exact trading dates, I have found record of William Harvest at this address listed as a Spice Dealer and Salterer in the 1870s and then listed as W & D, still trading in 1910.”
“The bottle itself is aqua glass with applied lip, it’s certainly not a bottle type I would ever have associated with pickles, and I now understand why those exceptionally long pickle forks were so popular, back in the day. Other finds in this little spot would point to a date of around 1890-1910! Now I am going to seal the top with wax… and never ever be tempted to open it.”
One of Jane’s 335,000 followers was left pondering: “Are 100-year-old pickles in pickle juice kept at a cold temperature still edible? They look good.”
[COINS] [SCIENCE] [AUSTRALIA]
Another explained: “What’s neat is that it could very well be perfectly sealed as the pickles have not decomposed but the brine escaped through the glass due to the liquid nature of soda glass.”
A third added: “Look at them all perfectly arranged. How did they get packed in there like that? ! Would be so tempted to give them a whiff but probably wise never to open them… I instantly regretted opening a cream pot river find once as it sprayed its acrid boron cream all over me.”