Incredible volume of WW2 relics recovered – One site, one dig!
There are a lot of pictures in this blog entry. I found one heck of a lot of relics and wanted to show them all. Give yourself plenty of time to go through them!
I have a number of different permissions across the country, some of which are average producers of relics, some good. One of the sites, an old British army dump pit, is by far the most productive. There is no need for a metal detector as the ground is full of metal, it is just a case of picking a spot and digging a hole!
This site is not only amazing because of the volume of relics in the ground, but also because of the sheer variety. There are examples of military items from not only WW2, but also WW1 and even earlier. The problem you face with this site is the digging can be hard going, as many areas of the dump were burnt in an effort to destroy the stuff thrown in there. These burnt areas tend to be melted together so you can hit a huge layer of rock solid metal. The dump can also go quite deep, up to 8 feet in some places, with other spots only just beneath the surface.
Some areas though escaped the burning, so all you have to contend with is the rust. This leads to another problem, which is the time it takes to clean everything. The pictures below show the results of two visits to the site. Ok, so not strictly speaking one site one dig, but the visits were so close it may as well have been! It took so long to clean one lot of relics, I was back at the site recovering more before the first lot were done. I much prefer to get everything cleaned and preserved from one dig before adding more cleaning to the pile!
I’m not going to say any more really, as the pictures speak for themselves. An incredible site, full of some of the most amazing relics. It really puts your cleaning and preservation skills to the test!
So, what did I recover from the site?
Let’s begin…..
Following the posting of this blog, the two brass hooks were identified by a gentleman on one of the military FB pages I frequent, (many thanks Dean!). Turns out they were from one of these….
Not a bad little haul……but there was more to come!
On the next trip a few weeks later, we shifted position slightly and struck a patch of dump where they had been getting rid of Bren parts…..along with a lot of other stuff.
With the right cleaning methods and a lot of patience, even this rusty pile of corroded crap can be brought back to life…..
That lot took quite some cleaning. But at least now everything has been cleaned and preserved and added to my museum. The ‘War Room’ is getting rather over-crowded!
Thank you forr being you
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