Mudlarking Rare 18th Century Secret Sea Glass! Unique Treasures of a 200 Year Old Glassworks!

hello okay so we're on the northumbrian coast and we're with flori and cecilia today and we're going to go and look for some great treasures so fingers crossed we find something so so found a really pretty piece of sponge wear look at the color of that it's gorgeous oh it's like purple yeah that's pretty isn't it lovely so flo and cecilia have found this amazing drip and they've given it to us and we're going to make a lovely little necklace out of that because that will make a perfect pendant so it's very generous of them and let's go and find some more we're just finding a lot of really old 18th century glass here and it's probably from the bottle works that was close by because the bottle works was going for over 200 years and started in the 1750s or 60s i think so yeah fantastic and here's another drippy bits wow that is gorgeous look at that i love it yeah look let me have a look oh that's lovely that's like a blob yeah blobby drippy blonde oh what's that is that a piece of cork i think cecilia's found blob i found some blobs wow we've got eyes like a hawk fantastic well done we've made the most incredible slug glass discovery here this is my handball so far i've got loads of floppy pieces and some beautiful beautiful slag glass and these are going to be amazing to try and make beads out of and jewelry from lovely little fragment of really old bottleneck there and this is another drippy bit it's like tube shaped oh and here a bit of pipe stem and another 200 year old drip of glass how wonderful is that these my collection of blobby bits so far i've got loads of them and these are going to make the most amazing necklace i think mum's been very successful too but we absolutely love them there's loads here and they're beautifully sculptural i wonder how the beads will look from this glass as well this piece of slag here look at the colors in there different shades of blue which is probably green if you hold it up to the light and here is a bit of blue and white isn't that lovely that would have been a beautiful pot [Music] and a little bit here i think that's sponge wear as well flurry has been finding all sorts of funny little drips and blobs they're fantastic i've never found anything like it before that's wonderful i love them they kind of like i don't know abstract yeah they are actually oh oh that's gorgeous look at the colors let me zoom in on that that is amazing wow so i've just found this and it's absolutely amazing i'll zoom in look at the structure in that it's crazy this is slug it's beautiful and some more drips and blobs in 1763 sir francis blake delaval obtained permission to build glassworks at scene sluice skilled workers were brought in from germany to train local men in glass making and eventually the skyline overlooking the harbour had six bottle-shaped furnaces named galligan bias charlotte hartley waterford and success the three tallest standing up to 130 feet the bottles were sent down to the harbour via wagon ways running through tunnels from there they were loaded onto the bottle bricks and sailed to london to be distributed around the country and beyond at its height the bottle works at seton sleuth was one of the largest in the country churning out an incredible 1 million 740 000 bottles per year local materials were used to make and colour the bottles including sea sand kelp clay and copperates the dark green almost black glass colours were achieved by the addition of ground clay and copperits the old name for iron sulfate was extracted at the copper its works from the pyrites that were brought up with the coal it was processed into pale green salts and it is believed that this may have given some of the bottles produced at seton its distinctive gooseberry color in a letter to the works from a london distributor an order contained the following ship three hundred dozen gooseberries old sort the mouths not too much spread nor too short in the necks the bottle works became a community unto itself and was known as the city of hartley bottle works it was so large it contained its own marketplace brewery granary brickyard chapel shops public houses a quarry and at iron works eventually increasing competition from bottle works at newcastle and sunderland who had access to better quality sand and coal led to the decline in orders and in 1872 the bottle works closed the last bottles left seton sluice harbour in the unity of boston bound for the channel islands and in 1896 the cone-shaped furnaces were demolished today there is hardly any trace left of the once great bottle works at seton sluice and not many would even suspect that it ever existed that is unless like us you spot the odd fragment of glass on the shores of the harbour and look up to catch a fleeting glimpse of the six great furnaces that once crowded the skyline [Music] here's a beautiful slag glass drip look at that oh my god this is just amazing we've never found anything like this before all in one place it's fantastic this drip looks like if it'll focus it looks like a bird's head look at that it could be a shu look i'm not sure but this looks like some sort of button oh that's interesting it is it's a button glass button fantastic amongst all the blobby bits another really pretty piece of slag glass there beautiful blue it's got sort of layers in it okay so there are loads there are loads of bits of glass mixed amongst the blobs and some of this glass like there's a bit of lip here that's a little bit later but some of the pieces are really old we think some of this glass is more like 18th century so we've got 18th century glass blobs going on here how cool is this how cool i can't believe it we've not found anything like it before no this is the first look mom's got some blobs i've got some blobs we've all got blobs it's blob mania oh there's one there's a nice one look oh yeah that's nice there there's a funny blob i'm a funny blob it's a lovely little clipping of copper or brass here which would be fantastic for making things with love it also a handful of blobs and drips all right alex has found gloves we are really like i know it's the best thing ever i absolutely love them we are definitely going to do something yes watch your space because this is going to make some lovely jewelry yeah i found this really old chisel and i might take that home and see if i can clean it up love the old bottleneck here oh i love them look at that that's gorgeous keeping that i'm not sure ah do you think it's a plaque of something has it got any writing on it [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it has to have a name oh hello susan cecilia's got susan the snail here oh she's cute what a cute little snail and i'll put this one in here florence found some a really cool little stone here but it has a yeah no but look at this look at that it's we thought it was a pebble but it's just a bubble i found another amber and a clear oh it's amazing though it's like a hidden secret color we've got two beautiful what yes yes oh look let's show you got tip one here that looks like a rock and that's it and one there oh yeah see they're hidden colored bits of secret what about this one no i'm not good at it so these are all the secret sea glass pieces i've got so far you wouldn't even think they were made oh they just look like rocks and flowers got a whole handful of them as well i think that round one's really beautiful yeah i'm so happy with that it's like a little bubble yeah [Music] huh [Music] let's try these ones oh the torch has gone off is this gonna be one no no is this one one mama can you come on [Music] is this one let's try this one yes it is it is yay a secret sea glass of seaton sluice okay alex is going to check to see if she's found some secret sea glass gonna play is this the secret sea glass of seton sluice or not no no yes yes that tiny one yes yes again and this one no oh no wait yes yes it is it's really really dark though actually out look it has two bubbles in it yeah i don't know if you can see that very well i probably wouldn't have known it was sea glass we did see the bubbles oh look it's got eyes you look like two eyes [Music] i think that looks like arthur after the secret sea glass testing pebbles to see if they are secret sea glass on the beach at night yes you've got a full house four houses [Music] you'll become a new secret seat class expert do you want to say what you just found i just found the biggest piece of sea glass it's huge it's the biggest piece of secret sea glass look at the size of that i think that's a winner for today definitely that's only my fourth one i found well well done i think you win [Music] [Music] hello so here are all the wonderful artifacts that we found when we were at seton sluice with florian cecilia yeah we've got the most incredible array of archaeological artifacts really from the gas works at seaton sleuth so it's absolutely an amazing collection and we're gonna go through it so these are all the little um we call them sticks and drips and these are bits of glass that have dripped off the crucible or all sorts of things within the glassworks yeah so this um you know it's this kind of thing that you don't usually find because we usually find glass that's being worn by the river or the sea um so these are have not been worn yeah this is how they came out of the glass works that's like a little puddle maybe the drip has dripped down off the side of a crucible maybe and dripped onto the floor um but we imagine that's what they're off the side drips off the sides of the crucibles and maybe when they've been gathering glass on the end of a blowpipe and bits have dripped off who knows but i think they're just beautifully sculptural and an incredible example of early glass making yeah this is what a lot of people call pirate glass but it's just black glass which was very prevalent in the 18th century and the 19th century we have the lighter green glass here and we've got some pictures to show you an example this is the bottom the kick up of one of the bottles that you can see in the picture now yeah so we have um an example picture of these because there's still some existing at seton delville hall which is um now owned by the national trust and this is a lighter color that was particularly associated this shade of green with the glass works there um and in a letter from a client dated 13th of july 1885 the light green glass bottles are referred to as gooseberries so um yeah that's the color isn't it yeah you can definitely it's very gooseberry colored actually isn't it these bottles were shipped down to london from seton sluice and then distributed all over the country so if you find one of these bottles you now know where it came from yeah incredible okay and this is not so much um kind of drips and waste glass slag but these are actually more parts of actual bottles so we think these are parts of bottles that never actually made it out of the bottle works other than in the rubbish because they failed during the glass making process yeah so yeah these were with all the drips and sticks we've got some lips here some of them dating back probably to the 18th century yeah like this one back right through to the 19th century that one's definitely one of the earlier ones this one here that is all melted and misshaped i mean they're just they're incredible it's a really unique example of the whole glass making process isn't it and this one here that i found in the river heaven knows what happened with this but it's very unusual yeah we can't really work it out is this like the top of a bottle like where the it's like a is it a bottle neck or what is it what is it anything else they were making yeah it's definitely some kind of waste that ended up in the rubbish heap so very intriguing very very intriguing but yeah they're all of our pieces of bottles um we've got more drips and things all sorts of bits slag that slag we've got a slag pile over here yeah we love slag as well and some of it is kind of this bluish kind of color this was probably just out of the crucible yeah and this is although there was an ironworks um there at seton sluice also it's a very dark thing to do with that and we also have this amazing piece of slag it reminds me of some sort of oriental mountain sculpture or something yeah it's absolutely amazing and yeah this is we we're wondering if this is like off the again maybe chipped off the side of a crucible or something but the texture and patterns on here is amazing yeah it's absolutely gorgeous and talking about chipping things off the crucible we also found this chisel it's a little bit different now than when it was when we found it which just a big hunk of rust i've managed to excavate the rust and find this inside was it used in the glass works knows it was definitely in within the rubbish that came from the glass work so it's fantastic though i love holding it it's really cool i mean it's obviously handmade hand-forged yeah really beautiful and one day if wherever if we can ever cut our own stones if we ever have any lapadre machines we'd love to try cutting some of these slicing through some of this slide glass yeah it's like inside and even maybe making you can kind of see through that one a little bit even making some cabochons out of this glass which would be amazing yeah other things that we found are little bits of metal and this um black glass button yeah i wonder if they made it at the glassworks yeah on their coats it's like a little maybe the same color isn't it it is well actually we'll have to put a light behind it because you can't see through it it's so dark it's very very dark black glass buttons were usually made um red or purple so we'll have to test to see what color this is but it looks like it's cut glass maybe a morning button or just a regular coat button but that's cool we also found some pottery there's some lovely sponge wear there and this feather edge dates from the 18th century yes it's just tiny look how tiny it is i think it's um another name for it was it called like pearl wear or something can't remember i think it's called pearl wear and sponge wear of course most of the rest of it's just sponge and then we have some clay pipe stems um were they from the workers in the glassworks yeah and finally we've got our beach finds so starting here i cannot resist a good purpose so true yeah they're just pebbles what can i say this one actually is so very shiny oh goodness i have got to make some jewelry with that one and then we have sea glass green nicely smoothed yeah and then we've got our magical secret sea glass and these are they just look like pebbles they do you would not know these weren't just gray pebbles on the beach um but we discovered that they are actually sea glass yes they are and we'll show you them under light but actually some of them you can actually see through just with the sunlight you can just about see through that one very very vaguely but we believe this is all old glass 18th century glass from the glassworks so this is this and this that's either been dumped but in the sea or dumped on the river and then been washed down the river into the sea and now it's sea glass and our name for it is going to be secret sea glass secrets and it's so much fun looking for it use your phone and test the pebbles oh look you can see through that one it's kind of like a dark brownie green color with a strong sunlight behind it they just look like pebbles they don't they they do incredible they are so beautiful these sneaky bits oh yes there's a clear one as well actually this one this is a lighter green color it's the same as the gooseberry glass the gooseberry glass so so we're gonna call sea glass this kind of color gooseberry glass yeah because it probably came from the scene yeah exactly so a gooseberry sea glass there i mean this could date anywhere from the 18th into the 19th century as well yeah but we love finding this and i think um flo and cecilia had a lot of fun finding this secret sea glass as well we did we couldn't drag ourselves off the beach like nine and half us nights yeah as you saw on the video it was literally dark by the time we got off the beach but it was so much fun so we'll definitely have to head back to seaton sleuths because they're just this is an incredible record of early glass making it's so amazing it is okay so we're gonna do some a little something aren't we yes i'm going to attempt to make a piece of jewelry using some of this very unique old glass so i'm not 100 sure yet so i can't tell you but you'll be able to watch it right now yeah so we're gonna do that and well you're gonna do that gonna get to it let's do it [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so here it is sitting down here on the table mom's amazing drippy blob glass necklace i don't know what to call it it's i mean there's definitely not another one like it it's so i think this is the only one of these in the entire universe so um yeah i think it's absolutely beautiful mum's made handmade each one of these caps to go on the end of the glass and ground the end of the glass so it's nice and kind of even for them to sit in and i think it's perfect it's it's just what i visualized it was yeah yeah me too it's really beautiful and yeah we're very lucky to have found these amazing blobs and drips uh to make things with hangs really nicely as well either in a bunch like that when it's on your neck it hangs more like that and it makes a lovely sound it does the chinkle we'll have to we'll have to hold it in front of the camera and film the sound oh and i have to say it is extremely tactile because these blobs just feel lovely these drips yeah they're lovely they're so unique it's kind of thing if you wore it you'd be fiddling with it all the time yes yeah definitely okay so our next thing to do is to try some of our secret sea glass and check out some of the colors of it so we're gonna use the torches on our phones and they just look like pebbles as they are now so we're gonna have a look okay so let's test this big bit is kind of like olive green actually it's really similar to our example bottle over here isn't it it's very similar in color to that look at this big bit oh and that one that's very similar in color and that's more of like a more greenish yeah more of a grassy green and this is secret sea glass but it's so dark i think it might be a piece of slag and this just looks like a pebble but look it's very very dark like brown like very dark yeah of course so some of this might actually be slag from the ironworks because there's an iron works very close by as well yeah right on the cliffs above where we found these actually oh look at that that's beautiful it's like the sun it's like a planet this one's another one that's very very dark there's so many different colors this looks like a little lip actually looks like a doesn't it oh and it's kind of like a dark brownish kind of color so is that one it's a more squarish piece that's a lot like sorry can't see through that one at all that's a very light that's like a piece of gooseberry glass yeah but look how dark it is when it's not i know you can't tell it's crazy actually you just think that was a purple look some of them have bubbles in them that is so dark it's a very ready amber color and that one is green but it's this is very dark okay so we're going to try the button to see what it was wondering if this was made in the glass works or whether it's a typical sort of french jet morning button so we will find out now and yeah look it's red yeah and french jet black glass buttons are usually this red color so that makes sense very dark red but i wonder if it was made in the glass rocks yeah who knows yeah okay so we've got two incredible example bottles here to show you and this is a mallet bottle late 18th or early 19th century and this is your classic onion bottle probably 18th century also yeah definitely so um these are actually incredibly similar to the bottles that would have been made in that glassworks it's a bit dark to see and it's quite dark but you can see the pontool they've both got pontil marks on the bottom and this is collared applied collared bottle and that's got applied lip and we know they would have made bottles like that there because they are exactly the right age and not only that the ones that we found look at the similarity between their lips on there they could have been made in the same place how incredible is that that's almost identical it is so maybe this bottle was made yes maybe we're holding because i got these bottles in northumberland so oh and um this is more like of a an onion bottle kind of shape the kick up i don't know whether you can see because it's pretty dark you get that in the light yeah the texture on the inside it's almost identical actually it's so similar the texture inside and everything in color so yeah it's amazing that we have these bottles actually to show you as examples of exactly what they would have made that's exactly what this slag and these drips are from the making of bottles just like this oh and this one um show you it again if anyone has any clue what that could have been oh yeah we'd love to know this is really unusual yeah and this was our first time meeting flurry and cecilia and they are absolutely lovely lovely people we had a fantastic time and please do go and visit their um instagram page which is flow fines and we'll leave a link to that in the description of the video yes because they both find some incredible things don't they yes florrie has been doing this for a very long time on the thames and found some wonderful wonderful things and she's very knowledgeable and little cecilia has been doing it practically her whole life yeah she's going to be an expert she is she already is yes she is all that leaves is to say a huge thank you once again to everyone who has contributed to our channel in any way at all we really really appreciate it yeah and we can't wait to go back to seton and make another video and maybe make some beads next time yeah i think we will out for the glass so big thank you to our patrons and everyone who's donated and we'll see you again next sunday bye you

Channel: Northern Mudlarks

Views: 23,584

Rating: 4.9564075 out of 5

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Id: BoT4NMfcQoc

Length: 38min 50sec (2330 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021