Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 172 Threads: 1
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Location: Richmond, Texas, USA
Some 40-odd years ago, an acquaintance bought a brand-new house in Ellesmere Port. He hadn't been there long before deciding to do some gardening, and very quickly came across the roof of an Austin A40. The rest of the car was there too, so were many other cars in his and his neighbours' gardens.
The site had been a scrap yard, and the developers hadn't been over-diligent about removing the scrap, merely piling soil on top.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 1,257 Threads: 32
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Location: Cheshire
Car type: Race Ulster, 1926 Special, 1927 Chummy, 1930 Box
There’s a rumour around here about an SS100. But there’s also one about a farmers field that has Spitfire propellor blades as fence posts. I’ve never been able to find either.
Alan Fairless
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 741 Threads: 8
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Location: N W Kent
on eBay soon -"excellent patina, ready for oily rag restoration"
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Location: Far West of New Zealand
Hey! I owned 103E Pop [1955] when I was an apprentice in the 70s. Better condition than the garden one fortunately.
The New Zealand thing seems to be burying obsolete steam locomotives, preferably in a river.
Although, in the case of one firm I worked for, the word was that the workshop extension was built over a Model T parts graveyard (they were buried to meet the auditors' requirements for 'writing off' unwanted parts I was told).
The vacant lot our house was built on was in the 30s and 40s, the informal rubbish dump for the street, nothing very interesting has surfaced apart from a few broken bottles and odd bits of scrap iron. I'm always a bit wary about digging too vigorously because there was also a small ammo dump just across the street during WW2 ...
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 82 Threads: 2
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My grandfather dug up a bomb in his garden.
The foreman of one of our spec builders buried an E Type on one of the sites. That was in the days when they weren’t worth anything as scrap.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 861 Threads: 16
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Location: North Yorkshire
When I bought my house in 1986 the garden was so overgrown that to be honest I didn't really appreciate how large it was. My initial concerns were to make it habitable with the usual damp-proofing, rewiring and installation of a heating system. As I tackled the garden it became larger and some six months later I realised that there was an old car buried at the bottom. The body above the waist line was visible indicating that it is a Ford 8 Model Y dating from the mid 1930's. I assume it was rolled down the long concrete drive and laid to rest. Over the years all sorts of rubbish including rubble and asbestos cement sheet has been dumped around it and the whole area has become overgrown with damson trees and budlea. As I write this there are rabbits, pheasants and partridges poking around the old Ford and it is haven for all sorts of wildlife. I have resisted all temptation to exhume the body. That leads me on to what is buried at the front of the garden.
I live immediately opposite the Church which although rebuilt in 1854 has much earlier origins. When I bought the house there was a wooden picket fence to the roadside boundary which was rotten. I decided to remove the fence and have a stone wall built. On digging down I came across the footings of the original stone wall. Whilst digging out some of the stones for reuse I unearthed a long bone that was dark brown in colour. I am no anthropologist but realised that it was a human thigh bone.
At the time one of my best mates was a local Solicitor who was also the County Coroner. He is no longer with us so I can say that he liked a drink and was also a keen old car man, having a Jowett Jupiter which he was rebuilding from a wreck. Sadly he never saw the Jowett completed. I mentioned to him that I had dug up what I thought was a human thigh bone. He asked me if it was over 100 years old. I said that it was dark brown and of considerable age. In that case, he said, I want nowt to do with it (or words to that effect).
I then had the problem of what to do with the thigh bone. I couldn't really put it in the household refuse bin. I didn't want a local dog to grab it and run off down the road. In the end I took it to the very bottom of the garden and threw it in the stagnant watercourse that forms the boundary.
A couple of years ago the electricity board were laying a new main cable down the village to do away with the overhead lines. When they were digging a trench just outside my front boundary I told the foreman about the thigh bone and he later confirmed that some other bones had come to light.
Just to add another anecdote about my friend the Coroner. When the A1 was being upgraded to motorway the archaeologists came across a skeleton up in Catterick which of course was an important Roman centre. The Coroner was informed and off he went to have a look at it. The skeleton was lying there at the bottom of a neat trench. Jeremy stepped forward to have a look and promptly fell in to the trench, ending up laid on top of the skeleton. He climbed out, brushed himself down, checked that he had not broken his pipe, and said to the archaeologist 'no damage done I hope'
The archaeologist, a middle aged woman in a tweed skirt replied 'I think you have broken her pelvis'.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 302 Threads: 54
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Good afternoon all I hope all fellow Austieers are well.. Many years ago I was told of a large stash of Austin 7 spares only to find I was the first man too late and they had been tipped into a mine shaft in Cheadle Staffs. At the first opportunity I visited the site which was a scrapyard and found a new Payen cylinder head gasket still in its waxed paper wrapper which I still have. The gasket was on the edge of the unfenced mineshaft ! Also on the edge was an aircraft wheel with TSR 2 cast into the centre. When the TSR2 project was cancelled the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson insisted that all the jigs, tools and parts were destroyed, apparentlly to appease the Americans so they would sell us their F111 (which we didn't buy).
This story came full circle a few months ago when I had a waste skip delivered and noticed that the lorry had the address of the yard on it.
I told the driver the story and he confirmed that he was the son of the owner and that tons of TSR2 parts had been tipped in great secrececy (!) and the shaft filled with concrete.
Regards from the creative county - Staffordshire
Stuart
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 1,808 Threads: 99
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hi R,
ive seen you work on worse.
come to think of it, ive seen you driving worse.
the 1924 didnt even have a body.
tony.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 123 Threads: 23
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Location: Doncaster, gateway to northern civilisation
There is a Honda 50 buried by a public footpath in Steeple Aston Oxfordshire. I could probably pinpoint the location. I had to dispose of it from our back garden in the early to mid 1970s under threat from my dad. Incidentally, quite close by is a time capsule containing parts of a USAF Voodoo aircraft which came down in our village. before they were replaced by the F111s. Within the capsule are fragments of maps showing targets in the USSR, and a macabre piece of a flight suit with part of a singed cloth badge. The Americans were a bit lax at the crash scene and we were able to pick up such souvenirs. Shocking, thinking back.
