A suggestion for your next project, and for a future generation

In 2022 we had a stone wall built in the garden, 35’ long, 6’ feet high.




What made the project a bit different was inserting a time capsule, and as you’ll see from the solidity of the wall it possibly will not be discovered from 100+ years. The capsule was a waterproof keg bought online from a ship’s chandlers and I was thinking it is an idea that could be adopted in any garden project, or just simply buried somewhere in your garden. There is no marker on the wall to say the capsule is there.



Deciding what to put in the capsule was great fun and I think it is possible that whoever discovers it might be able to open their own local history museum.

Here’s a list


Time Capsule

• Copy of the (Viklage name) book (The one I wrote!)
• Parish magazine
• Guardian, Daily Star and Observer newspapers with articles on Covid and Trump and Prince Philip
• Rutland Mercury
• Christmas edition of Radio Times
• Copy of Country Life
• Lands End catalogue or similar
• Copy of (Village name) under Lockdown - anthology of residents’ experiences of Covid and lockdown. One of the villagers compiled an anthology of our hopes, fears and experiences and produced a wonderful little booklet
• Seed and plant catalogues
• A face mask
• Christmas bauble of Santa wearing a face mask
• Red nose
• Seeds to try to germinate. These were wild flower seeds provided by the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens and vacuum sealed
• Coins - from 1870 to 2020
• Aerial photos of the village
• Identification of all houses shown on the photo, who lives in them and what job they do/did
• Village street scenes
• Aerial photo of our house in 1960s and 1990s
• Aerial photo of our house today
• Timeline of our house’s history
• Lots of photos of the house, its contents and the garden.
• Brief biographies of us
• Copy of Mrs Cotto’s ‘journal of a Plague Year’ (She kept a diary throughout lockdown describing the stresses and fears we encountered)
• List of all the meals we have eaten this year (I know it’s odd, but we keep a record in the diary)
• A copy of the Tesco food delivery order
• Copy of the House deeds
• An advent calendar
• A couple of Christmas cards
• NHS letters telling Mrs Cotto she is on the extremely vulnerable list.
• Advice from charities regarding Covid
• Copy of the poster by a local artist showing all the Covid things that happened in Rutland during 2020 (It’s a montage showing queues outside supermarkets, shortages of toilet paper, badgers and foxes on Uppingham High Street, elderly folk isolating, people washing their hands, facemasks, people taking up gardening etc)
• Explanation of the poster
• (Name of Village) Covid Support Group flyer. A village group that did shopping, ran errands etc for folk who were isolating
• Photo of my Italian group on Zoom
• Invitations to parties early in 2020 then the subsequent cancellation messages
• The wrapper and box vaccination vials come in plus other vaccination info including a sticker saying I’ve been vaccinated today
• A face mask
• Results of the Great British bird watch
• Messages from children living in the village
• A cheque
• List of what’s in the capsule with explanations where necessary
• A library ticket
• A pack of playing cards
• An old mobile phone

 

Ben, have you put all that lot in? Is it a capsule or a wheelbarrow?

Beautiful wall, BTW!

 

The picture of the capsule might not have uploaded correctly. Hopefully you can now see it - the keg is about 15” high and 9” in diameter.

 

Ah, I can see it now ... Am very impressed with the amount you fitted in. You must have excellent packing skills.

 

Nice idea, I like it.

 

Lovely wall, just right for espalier fruit ; apple, pear, cherry, apricot .fig.

 

We haven't unearthed a Time Capsule as such but we have learned a lot about the previous owners of our house just from digging in the garden. They have earned our undying respect for what they achieved with only bare hands and hand tools.
Our house sits in the side of a steep hill and this ensures that whenever it rains (all the time at the moment it seems!) we get the run off from higher up. The stone to build it was taken from the hillside and maps show numerous small quarries dotted over the hill above.
We had a number of field drains already, but some parts of the garden are still very boggy. My daughter has made herself something of a drainage expert by seeking out the underground water in order to channel it effectively.
When digging ditches she found the remains of previous drains and some of them went very deep (more than a metre) and are clearly very old, as they are well below the roots of some mature sycamores and larches. They were built of the same stone as the house, arranged in different ways.
Many were still working effectively, which saved much work, while others had to be unblocked. She is gradually clearing those, and has restored the stone drains where possible. The quarry drains were upturned V shaped, others had flat bottoms and square sides.
The water is now channelled down a waterfall from the field above, into a little stream. This empties into a series of 3 ponds, also built by our predecessors, though we don't know how long ago. The last pond releases the water into the boggy triangle, where the run-off from the neighbour's fields joins it and it heads downhill to join the local river and ultimately the sea. When she has finished the garden will be much more easily accessible. She also found out that the grey clay sludge she was digging up did wonders for her exzema!

 

Goodness that's a lot of stuff for someone to find. Not sure if I'd care too much who lived in the house previously except for the original builder of an usual property. I'm in process of buying a really individual house in North Wales and have found some photographs of a resident lady covering 30s-50s deposited in the local archives which I'm keen to explore when we move... but not sure I'd care what her diet was like, mind

 

Really amcGeorge? I would be fascinated to find out all the things that people were eating who lived in my house in 1832. I would also like to know what those things cost, what their house looked like, what jobs they did and their life stories. I would read with great interest a snapshot of a year in their life. I would like to know what my village looked like 190 years ago and the occupations of all the inhabitants.

I am confident in saying that if a 150 year old capsule was unearthed today containing such information, it would probably be the main story in the Rutland Mercury. I could see it featuring on regional TV news and might even be a light hearted filler on the national news if stories were light that day.