Sunday 7 December 2014

Attic Treasure

I use the word 'treasure' in a tongue-in-cheek way, because on our recent foray into the attic, we didn't find any antique vases, stashes of gold or chests of jewels.

Attic Treasure


What we did find was:
  • A folder containing plans for a dormer bungalow and a housing development.
  • The original metal curtain rail from our dining room.
  • Some polystyrene ceiling tiles (what a mercy they weren't installed somewhere in the house!!).
  • A box from Bourne and Hollingsworth Department Store on Oxford Street, London, post-marked 1954.
  • A sack from Baxton and Guion Potato Merchants in Peterborough, dated 1951.
  • A sack from S. Squires and Sons Ltd. in Leicester.
  • A moth-eaten dress, most probably 1950's, littered with the bodies of moth larvae.  It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.  The skirt was tweedy and the top was like a camisole, so maybe it would have had a matching jacket original to go over the top.
  • Some wooden planks.
  • Sections of polystyrene lagging for pipes. 

Attic Treasure

The most interesting find for me was the department store box, as I hadn't heard of Bourne and Hollingsworth (apart from the modern vintage events company, which has obviously taken its name from the store).  It seems it had quite a presence on Oxford Street until the 1980s, surviving bombing in WWII and having an Art Deco makeover in the late 1920s.

I wonder what was in the box?  Something fancy I bet!  It was marked as 'Mrs Watkins, c/o Mrs Thomas', followed by our address.  Perhaps Mrs Watkins was a friend or relative of Mrs Thomas?  We'd heard from some elderly neighbours that a previous occupant of our house was a vicar, so maybe I should now be looking for Reverend Thomas.  I should get my Mum on the case, because she's a Family and Local History expert, even if that's not her day job!  Perhaps she can find out why there's such a link to the Midlands, as we're in Wales so those potatoes must have travelled a fair way...

Have you found anything interesting when you've moved into a place?

8 comments:

  1. We found a laser disc player in the loft on one place we moved to, I'd never seen one before. I love how attics become the place for defunct technology!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perhaps Mrs Watkins was hiding an expensive Bourne and Hollingsworth purchase from her miserly husband by having it sent to her friend Mrs Thomas! Or perhaps it was a gift? Fascinating, you can weave all sorts of stories around that old box!
    I feel quite disappointed that I've never found anything interesting in a house I've moved into... There was a massive stash of porn in a cupboard of a shared student house I lived in in 1983, does that count?! xxx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I actually snorted with laughter at this, you have such a vivid imagination! And no, the cupboard stash doesn't count ;)

      Delete
  3. I love finding stuff, no matter how bizarre!
    Bourne & Hollingsworth were an upmarket department store that shut in the 1980s. One of my friends has a peacock blue velvet opera coat she bought from a vintage fair for a pittance last year. I'm eternally envious of it!
    Here's a video you'll find interesting: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/london-sales

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That video is an absolute GEM! I loved it, especially the shot panning down to show the salesgirls had all kicked their shoes off! Thanks x

      Delete
  4. We found an old copy of the Daily Mail, a rubbish bin and a manky old blanket in this house. The blanket was so gross it pretty much made it's own way down the ladder, I had visions of it creeping out of the wheelie bin in the dark of the night and making it's way back up into it's attic lair!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. All I've ever found is a tonne of carpet offcuts and garden furniture in bad condition... your finds sound much more exciting!! Mind you, I've never been in the attic of this house... partly because it's not easy to get into and partly because I know for sure one thing's up there: MICE!!! I hear them scrabbling around every night... I'm convinced by now they must have the equivalent of a mouse city up there. I don't think I'll ever be visiting it... x

    ReplyDelete
  6. The only thing that I found when I moved to my most current place was this crazy gizmo for washing or heating up baby bottles. My boyfriend was like, "no, we should keep this, it's cool looking!" My response was something like "are you trying to tell me something?" It was weird.
    That box is a really cool like bit of ephemera. What a great find. It would be so interesting to try and trace the people it belonged to - you probably wouldn't be able to find out what's in the box, but maybe they, or their children, would be interested in knowing that someone so interested in history is living in their house.

    ReplyDelete

Comments from readers make my day!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...