Find out what secrets the Victorians buried for us to find...
The book, the database, the project
WhatTheVictoriansThrewAway.com is a unique reference resource for researching the hidden lives of the Victorians at home. It brings together for the first time over 500 unique everyday objects, photographed, described and catalogued.
The ground-breaking idea originating in the book What the Victorians Threw Away is to dig up rubbish dumps, and examine what different households discarded, as a new technique for delving into the past.
The objects that emerge often tell intimate stories about the people who used them. Explore this website to bring the world of our great grandparents vividly to life. You can also use it to discover the origins of our throwaway society today.
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Find out about the book that started it all, and how to order itFind out about the book that started it all, and how to order it
Explore the database
Discover the project
Latest additions to the database:
Childhood and Education
Food and Drink
Health
Household
Transport
Latest blog posts:
Kentwell Hall
Kentwell Hall, in Long Melford (Suffolk), is a perfectly preserved fifteenth-century moated manor house, open to the public. It is famous for its summer recreations of Tudor life, when hundreds of reenactors appear in costume around the grounds, engaging in everything...
Rural re-use and Recycling between the Wars
Ringstead is a village in North West Norfolk, not far from Hunstanton. Early in 2016, a project team from What East Anglia Threw Away, excavated the village rubbish dump using garbology methodology. The site had been used between 1922 and c. 1960, but we focused on...
Brickworks and Recycling
In Victorian times, 90% of refuse that was collected (by weight) was ash from domestic and industrial coal fires. The Victorians called it 'dust', and the Public Health Act of 1875 required every household to have a receptacle, called a dust-bin, into which it could...