# Another Deep Philly Brickliner



## baltbottles (Aug 20, 2013)

We dug another deep brickliner in Philly on Saturday. It wasn't as good as the one a couple weeks ago but still wasn't bad. It measured in at 31 feet deep. We found a couple dozen pontiled sodas some stoneware bottle and several pontiled meds. Also there were about a hundred milks and blob beers mixed in the mostly clay and brick fill. Sorry i din't get a picture of these as it was very late and I was tired when we were spiting up the finds.

 Chris


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## baltbottles (Aug 20, 2013)

getting a bit deeper.


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## baltbottles (Aug 20, 2013)

The brick pile from this hole was rather large and had quite a few whole bricks so Tom built bottle jail for this cheesy machine made whiskey flask we found at about 15 feet deep.


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## baltbottles (Aug 20, 2013)

some of the pontil era finds.


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## baltbottles (Aug 20, 2013)

a few more pontil era finds.


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## idigjars (Aug 20, 2013)

Cool post Chris.  Congrats on your dig.   Paul


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## RICKJJ59W (Aug 20, 2013)

> ORIGINAL:  baltbottles
> 
> The brick pile from this hole was rather large and had quite a few whole bricks so Tom built bottle jail for this cheesy machine made whiskey flask we found at about 15 feet deep.


 
 Nice! lol I would have put a Ritter in there.  Man you guys are into the shit lately!


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## MINNESOTA DIGGER (Aug 20, 2013)

great find


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

Opening up the hole...


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

We started early, this is how things looked by around 8 AM...


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

An hour or so later, with custom built canopy, this time to keep out the sun instead of 8 inches or rain[8|]


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

We were still hitting milks and machine made crud past 20 feet.  It wasn't until around 25 feet that it finally turned old and the bottle jail became obsolete.


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

Digging pontilled layer in the dark, another long night...


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

There's a little man 30 feet down below! Let's see if we can hit him with a mud glob!


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

Finally finished the hole in the wee hours, then came the fun part. filling it in. Oh no, another victim of diggerstroke, caused by moving dirt for about 20 hours straight. Alas, it's terminal. We were going to use him for fill, but we had extra dirt as it was.


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

Somewhere around 4 AM the hole was finally filled, concreted, and cleaned up - then came the pick. lots of milks and turn of the century stuff to chose from[8|]...


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

Along with the better stuff - Assorted Philly sodas, a small slipware plate, a cobalt mug base soda from Hartford, Ct, a few nice meds and inks, everyone got something decent. Got home around 6AM, about the same time I woke up 24 hours earlier.  Long, hard day - but I'll gladly keep doing it!


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## mtfdfire22 (Aug 20, 2013)

crazy......


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## botlguy (Aug 20, 2013)

Thanks for letting us tag along. I'm tired also, I'm going to take a nap. []


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## NyDigger1 (Aug 20, 2013)

Awesome stuff! I wish I could dig a pit like that, maybe soon []


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## GuntherHess (Aug 20, 2013)

would love to have those bricks.


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## cannibalfromhannibal (Aug 20, 2013)

I'm with Jim! A nap sounds good! Really, though, are these privys or wells? Are they commercial like hotels or residential? I find your digs fascinating and unique in my digging experience....these seem to be in larger cities.....is this a correct assumption? As in, I can forget finding something like this in little Hannibal? Largest thing I have seen was over the river in Quincy, a ginormous brick cistern used for the fire dept. in late toc about 30 ' deep and 25+' diameter, empty of course. Buddy of mine scraped open the edge while doing a demolition job, and it was scary just peering over the edge! Fine job, you guys, keep the stories and pics coming! I scrape and scrap HARD just for one pontiled soda! Your stories give me dreams of cracking open Dr Dyott's glass mine! YEAH! Jack


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## Ratzilla (Aug 20, 2013)

I'm sure this pit was residential, but commercial establishments had them, too, some of those are widebody monsters.  In Philly, the depth of the pits was decided mainly by geography - they dug them as deep as they could until they hit some fairly impenetrable strata.  Where the soil was reasonably easy to excavate, the pits run past 30 feet, while other, equally old sections of the city rarely have pits past 7 or 8 feet.  In the late 1700's there were also regulations as to what the maximum depth of a privy could be in certain sections of the city(presumably to avoid contaminating nearby wells), so that's another variable in the oldest part of town.  I've heard of deep pits occasionally being found in small towns, but they seem more common in big cities.  I wonder what the deepest one out there that anyone has dug is - around 45 feet is the deepest I've heard of in Philly, but I know some go past 50 feet in Pittsburgh.  That's a lot of dirt...and hopefully bottles[]


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## botlguy (Aug 20, 2013)

For what it's worth, I personally have dug a Redwood lined 5 X !0 X 15 footer in Santa Ana, Calif. and my digging partner dug a Redwood lined 25 footer in San Diego. Both of these were behind Boarding / Rooming Houses. Santa Ana was a small town, San Diego a bit bigger but nothing like Philly. Our pits were mid-1880s at the earliest.


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## cacarpetbagger (Aug 20, 2013)

> ORIGINAL:  baltbottles
> 
> We dug another deep brickliner in Philly on Saturday. It wasn't as good as the one a couple weeks ago but still wasn't bad. It measured in at 31 feet deep. We found a couple dozen pontiled sodas some stoneware bottle and several pontiled meds. Also there were about a hundred milks and blob beers mixed in the mostly clay and brick fill. Sorry i din't get a picture of these as it was very late and I was tired when we were spiting up the finds.
> 
> Chris


 How could you tell where the pit was?


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## Penn Digger (Aug 20, 2013)

Another nice dig. Congrats.  Are you going to show any of those pontils when you get them cleaned up?

 PD


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## cannibalfromhannibal (Aug 21, 2013)

FASCINATING! Deepest I have dug here was about 22' but likely was a well. Deepest privy that I am sure was a privy was at 18'. I can't imagine a 30+ footer, never mind a 50 footer! Your stories on these monsters are simply heart stopping! Keep it up! Love seeing what comes next, as I am sure you all do! Jack


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## rpinkham (Aug 21, 2013)

Hey you guys!  Save some bottles for the rest of us please!

 Congrats on the nice finds!


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## blade (Aug 21, 2013)

Great digs guys ! I was wandering what these 2 bottles are ?


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## Ratzilla (Aug 22, 2013)

Top one is a Hover master ink, lower was a round med of some sort, I don't recall the name, one of those 'somebody or other, druggist' bottles.  I'll post pics of the stuff I got cleaned up later.


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## nmozeko (Aug 22, 2013)

cool dig, thanks for posting pics!


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## GACDIG (Aug 23, 2013)

I love going along on the dig. Like to see some of the bottles cleaned up too.


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