#DebrisDiary time! Week two of sifting debris from beneath the attic floors has turned up some more interesting items for #FindsFriday. So what did we find between 1st and 4th August?
@NatTrustArch
This week's debris were taken from the Wallpaper and Tank Attics, the finds found in each room are quite different. This tray shows a typical selection of small objects found in one sifting session from the Wallpaper Attic, which give us an impression of how that room was used.
We have found pins, lead shot, textiles, lovely coloured-glass beads, and some tiny pieces of newspaper, printed books and hand-written documents. We don’t currently have a date for the beads, but we still find ourselves trying to imagine the dresses they might have adorned.
This week we found a tiny fragment from ‘The Naval Chronicle, Volume 19, January-June 1808: Containing a general and biographical history of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom with a variety of original papers on nautical subjects’.
The article describes the ‘Articles of capitulation for the surrender of the Danish island of Santa Croix and its dependencies’. The history of the occupation of Santa Croix makes for interesting and sobering reading in connection with the history of slavery and colonialism.
This appears to be the tooth of a tortoiseshell comb. There are a few examples of similar objects in the collection, with dates ranging between 1700 and 1900.
You can just about still see a pattern on the fabric of these buttons, little hints of a chequered blue.
Finds from the Tank Attic have so far been rather more associated with the history of the construction and decoration of the building; there have been some really nice wallpaper finds from this room, such as this 19th century floral paper which has not been seen before at Oxburgh
As ever, thank you to curator Anna Forrest for these fascinating insights into the finds. Thank you also to
@DCMSArts
@HeritageFundUK
@wolfsonfdn
for supporting our #RaisetheRoof project.
Swing by this time next week for the 3rd edition of our Debris Diary!
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