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
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Latest additions to the database:
Childhood and Education
Food and Drink
Health
Household
Transport
Latest blog posts:
A Norfolk Rectory: Part 2
Having discovered a large pit containing rubbish thrown away by the rector George France in the 1870s, we decided to hire a 1.5 ton digger, to extend our excavations, for we still had little sense of the size or gradient of the filled-in hole. Tom, operating the...
A Norfolk Rectory: Part 1
This summer, I was invited to inspect a hollow in the grounds of a beautiful rectory in south Norfolk. The area lies to the rear of the rectory garden, screened by trees, and the owners had discovered bottles and old metal buckets there while planting shrubs. When I...
Porter Bottle
Porter was a strong beer, first marketed in the 1820s and sold in stoneware bottles, which were larger than ginger beer bottles and possessed a double rim and a typical 'hard shouldered' shape, as in the picture. This particular bottle was made by Joseph Bourne at the...