The cottage has yielded one or two interesting little trinkets, this is not surprising given the age of the building. here are our favourites:
fishing and nets, until the obvious was pointed out to me – it is the carpenter’s gauge for setting out the external weatherboarding to a consistent overlap! So simple. The metal top would have been attached by a lanyard to the carpenter’s belt whilst he hammered away at the nails securing the boarding to the frame. We wonder if this belonged to William (Chippie) Thorp. Over the past few months we’ve removed a good many of his rusting nails!
Grubbing around in the Thames Estuary you might find any number of the hollow clay stems associated with the traditional tobacco pipes – we found this almost complete clay pipe when clearing out the debris from the larger of the two sheds. We wonder if this belonged to Fred Joscelyne the blacksmith (see pages 5 and 11 of the Heritage Assessment).
Leigh Hill Progress 