Whats the strangest thing youve ever dug up ?

You may be interested in this @pete. It suggests the name is more Sussex than Kent. I inserted Maytum rather than Maytom.

named - Map your surname across the UK

 

OK thanks, Sussex and Kent are pretty close.
I put my name into that and apparently I should be somewhere west of Birmingham.

 

Johnnie Walker signage

 

When levelling a hump in the lawn I uncovered a complete bicycle. Too far gone to do anything with.

 

Not anything time team would get excited about but we found a whole asbestos garage buried in my brothers garden as well as an old boiler and a few more old appliances, plus a meat clever.
Down the allotment there was yet more asbestos, a complete rolled up carpet, dozens of what we think were pig bones, numerous shoe polish tins which were all buried underneath a complete window.

 

I dug up a complete engine rocker box in my front garden.

 

I have posted elsewhere a photo of petunia Red Velour growing by my brick shed. The pot they’re in is an old washing copper which was buried in the garden.

 

I found this 1891 Victorian half penny. The road I’m on was an track/footpath through a field so I get clay pipes as well.

Also this s-shaped fastening. I only found it 2021 after 25 years of digging the same veg garden it just turned up on the top. It was very dirty so I cleaned it up using a hawthorn thorn (I’d seen them doing that on Time Team). It’s not really old or very fancy but I’m pleased with my little bit of treasure.

 

The last one reminds me of the snake belts.
Not quite the same though.

 

I didn't dig it up myself, but when our old concrete drive was dug up they discovered an old cast iron boiler buried beneath it. It was a big one, at least 2' square and about 3 feet long. We couldn't make sense of that as it seemed much harder work to dig the hole to bury it, than it would have been to dispose of it.

 

@SherwoodArrow that's beautiful! I'd be well chuffed with that find! Any ideas about its history?

 

Not really. The houses were built in the 1930s and it was agricultural land before that. There were only 2 occupants of the house before we bought it, the concrete was laid long before our precedessors moved and and the original occupant has long since popped their clogs. We don't know whether he laid the concrete of if it was done as part of the house build.

 

It could be any age then, that's exciting! It looks very celtic. I love it.

 

@Mrs. B. I sent a picture to our local portable antiquities scheme officer who said it was a swans head s-shaped belt fastener with leaf details, she dated it as post medieval.
I was then told over on the GW forum that it was more likely to be WW1 era. So who knows.... I love it though whether new or old its still treasure to me.
What I love most about it is the two grooves where the "belt" has rubbed and worn the metal away, it makes me wonder about the person who lost it. Its like a link to a person in the past.

 

I know exactly what you mean about the personal history - I'm the same, it's intriguing and good exercise for the imagination.
I love old stuff, it seems heavy with history if that makes sense?