MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Gloria]

Treacle mine escape tunnel cover????

[David Whipp]

Gloria, how did you expose the cunning plot?

I didn't realise that the myriad teams from Transco were actually on a secret treacle hunting mission... the cover story of searching for gas beneath our street was a brilliant distraction.

The secret circles are of course exits for the treacle miners.

With plot night almost upon us, the price of treacle must have shot through the roof.

Some of the Transco Treaclers turned up in tremendous trucks, deployed massive diamond tipped core drills (a miner's width wide) and cut through the street's bitmac surface.

The Treaclers bobbed into the holes.

Whether the Transco Treaclers are still there, underground and treacling away, I cannot say.

The surface team swung the plugs of bitmac back across the holes and sealed the edges and central hole with bitumen, leaving a smooth and almost unblemished surface.

When the underground treaclers have done their work, do above ground crews return to let them out?

Will our street collapse into abandoned treacle workings?

Will the fate of the Transco Treaclers remain a mystery?

[Tizer]

Will your drinking water be contaminated with treacle?

I predict that by next year your street will have a line of deep depressions after the subsurface material has settled and compacted further. I read yesterday that Bath Abbey is having all its indoor flagstones taken up to put in an underfloor heating system fed by the hot springs around Bath. When they took up the flags they had to call in the archaeologists because the abbey is supposed to have had about 6000 burials under the floor over many centuries. What they found was disturbing.... where the bodies had decomposed it had left cavities and the underfloor is now honeycombed and the walls and columns in some were described as `sitting on thin air'! The holes are now being hastily filled with mortar. Perhaps best not to visit Bath Abbey until it's done and proved to be safe.

[Wendyf]

David, I dread to think what the consequences may be of mentioning the black sticky stuff on this site. I personally have never dared to use the word and Gloria should know better ... but perhaps the proximity of Halloween has made her incautious. Fingers crossed it goes unnoticed...

[Tripps]

" Fingers crossed it goes unnoticed..."

No chance. - Good to see the site return to its roots. Let the facts speak for themselves. We are of course rapidly approaching what economists call 'peak traycle' . No surprise at all that new supplies are being sought.

[Stanley]

Lovely posts! And Tiz is right, there will be small round puddles. Whether they will be traycle or not remains to be seen.
Treacle mining in Barlick! (I put that in so the bots will pick it up.)
Here's an old one to keep you going

[David Whipp]

19th century Treacle Toffee Tin.

[Gloria]

A treacle miners thimble, which he puts on his finger to dip in the treacle, so that he doesn't get it burnt when testing the taste.
How big is it Stanley, it would be a good clue then as to how big the treacle miners are.

[Cathy]

Out of my depth here with all this talk of treacle, haha, ... sounds like Christmas is coming to OG

[Tizer]

Shell case found by archaeologists on the site of the 19th Century Barlick treacle miner riots.

[Stanley]

Two inch diameter. Nothing to do with treacle!

[Stanley]

Oh dear! Have you forgotten what it is?

[David Whipp]

Not sure I ever knew, Stanley.

Ink pot?

[Stanley]

No point prologuing the agony. It's one of the tins used by the tacklers to take the weaver's wages into the mill. They were in a wooden tray with numbered square divisions. It was a bad method because it meant the tacklers knew who was not earning enough from their looms and as the tackler's wage included an element calculated on the weaver's wages for their set of looms it meant that the low-performing weavers could be targeted and got rid of if the tackler knew of a better weaver. Try this one, a fine example of the tinsmith's art.

[David Whipp]

Quill pen ink pot!

(As used underground to tally treacle miner's output.)

[Marilyn]

Several suggestions for a metal container that shape...
...used for baking ( pastry horns filled with cream)
...tallow candle holder
....holy water holder
...specimen collection container for diabetics to collect "impure" urine
...mould for shaping/opening paper hot chip holders at a fish and chip shop
...apparatus for shaping party hats/ dunce cones

[Cathy]

I think it hangs on a wall, and possibly holds either flowers or a form of lighting.

[Gloria]

Is it for hanging on the wall to hold a "stick" with a flame
(for lighting in the treacle mine)---shhhhh never said that.

[plaques]

We had something similar as a boy. Used for holding tapers. Especially useful if you had gas lighting.

All this talk of "treacle" reminds me that Burnley had a "Treacle Row" on Coal Clough Lane, demolished in 1890. Why Treacle Row I don't know.

[Stanley]

Sorry. none of the above. It's about 3" high.....

[Cathy]

Is it an old fashioned piece of kitchenalia, pie funnel for steam?, an icing piper (don't think so, not with that hole in the middle), mmmm... I think that is me done.

[chinatyke]

Is it for dispatching geese and other fowl?

[Steeplejerk]

Oil dripper ?

[Stanley]

Ahh... Young Tom is almost there. No hole in the bottom, it's oil tight but he's on the right track.

[David Whipp]

Oil wicking implement; a wick draws the oil from the reservoir.

This is used with a special anti treacle concoction on the axles of treacler's trucks underground.