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Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 3:57 pm
by Tommy
What is the most interesting/ unusual thing you've found whilst working?
I had my first experience of seeing a freshly deceased person, collapsed and died while out for a morning walk. Woman walking her dog found him, and shouted us over just as we were going for a brew.
laid out in by the side of the tennis courts, skin gone a dark blue shade.
Put me right of my dinner unfortunately. definately the most sombre thing I've seen while working.
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:20 pm
by Tony McC
When I was 18, a lad digging only a metre or so away from me unearthed a sovereign, which he later sold for 25 quid, about the same as I earned in a typical week at the time!
When working in Preston Town Centre in the late 1980s, we 'discovered' ancient and forgotten tunnels running to/from the parish church. I can't quite recall exactly what became of them, as I was struck down by glandular fever the very next day and didn't work for a fortnight, by which time they'd been explored, documented and sealed. One of the site engineers told me they had been escape tunnels for priests during the reformation, but that may be anecdotal.
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:46 pm
by dig dug dan
whilst clearing russian vine from a large embankment, beneath it all at the top, was a dismembered ginger cat. probably been there only a week. someone had gone to the trouble of trying to hide it amongst the undergrowth
on another occasion, whilst removing some corrugated iron sheets again from some cleared undergrowth,i discovered the remains of a pet python the customer had lost about two years ago. it stank and was in a liquid form by then. i can still smell it to this day! 
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:11 pm
by nick65
In 1986 i was 21 and working for a local groundwork subby. We were building a new print works on the site of the old rail station and its yards in Abingdon just south of Oxford.The station had been run down since the end of WW2 and closed for good in 1978 when the local MG car factory was shut down. We were told that much army surplus was dumped and buried here and to report anything odd that came up whilst digging the footings and drainage trenches.In no time at all historians and archeaologists were swaming all over the job. we had dug up countless thousands of army socks,yes mouldy old socks that had been in the ground some 40 years and were being sifted through by the history bods with a reverance like they had just found the worlds 8th wonder. Us lads thought them all mad and left them to it. Later we unearthed hundreds of bayonets and a tail section of an aircraft. On digging deeper we found countless victorian jars and bottles as the site was origanally a small boggie basin that the victorians had used as a landfill dump.Fasinating stuff this history thats all around us.
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 9:37 pm
by GB_Groundworks
i was putting some land drains in and came across an engine buried in the field, a old single cylinder diesel joby.
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 9:53 pm
by msh paving
2 weeks ago digging through church yard,450mm deep-3 heads bones etc,archoligist thought 200years old,then next pull strait through middle of skeliton,was a eriee job,she just chucked um back on backfilling without benifitt off clergy ....
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 1:09 am
by lutonlagerlout
an army lorry at a pig farm in cubblington ,full of rusted spanners???
4 lee enfield .303 rounds??
a pewter spoon dated to 1680,which my old man cleaned with brick acid and broke
a george the 3rd 1P
25 years of digging for that!!
LLL 
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:06 am
by Suggers
One clay pipe (immaculate) - a beautiful clear "Tring Lemonade" bottle, still with the marble in the neck, and the jawbone of an ass.
Sorry, last one was complete fabrication - I wish you all a Hippy New Year - today was my birfday & had a fab time - hic - hic - one year older, and none the wiser.
luv you all - suggers xxx
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:32 am
by Dave_L
msh paving wrote:2 weeks ago digging through church yard,450mm deep-3 heads bones etc,archoligist thought 200years old,then next pull strait through middle of skeliton,was a eriee job,she just chucked um back on backfilling without benifitt off clergy ....
We've done exactly the same whilst excavating new footpaths for the church. All loaded away and 'disposed of' pretty quickly!
Didn't enjoy that job much.
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:48 pm
by Pablo
Couple of years ago we found a WW2 air raid shelter in someones back garden. When i say we I mean the digger and driver found it when it collapsed with them on top. It was a home made job with the curved wriggly tin and sandbags that was underground and covered over after the war. It took all day to get the digger out it was a micro and no hire firm had another to give us to help get it out. Lots of digging by hand. We find dead pets a lot and the odd bit of pottery or glass and once I found some old boys medals and war letters in a buried tin box. I notified the police but no luck in finding his family so I gave them to my nephew who's army mad.
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:05 pm
by Tony McC
Speaking of dead pets, we installed a septic tank for well-off-the-beaten-path cottage some years ago. First job after the Christmas break, cold and miserable, and the digger unearthed 4 or 5 plastic bags, each containing the putrefied (and exceptionally malodorous) remains of family dogs. One of the bags split open, spilling its waxy contents all over the ground, only to be followed by the banksman spilling the contents of his stomach on the ground right next to it!
The bloke that owned the cottage told us that he'd inherited it from the wife's uncle, who had lived alone with only his dogs for company. Apparently, in a slough of depression, he shot the dogs, wrapped them in bin bags, buried them in the garden, then shot himself.
What a wonderfully cheery job for early January!
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:01 pm
by lutonlagerlout
there is an irish fella who drinks in the compasses in luton,both his brothers committed suicide back home in the family farm in co.kerry after buying chickens
anyway the farm became his after his last brother topped himself (same barn with a rope btw, as previous brother)
i said "so ****** what are you going to do?"
and in his lilting kerry voice he said "i'm not for buying any chickens,that's for sure"
100% true and very sad really
LLL
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:01 pm
by nick65
Last summer my mate dug up a skeleton of some kind of monkey.At fisrt he called the police as he thought it was human.He was quite disturb by it poor chap.
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:27 pm
by centralcompactcrushers
While crushing at a local skip hire company, one of our lads thought there was a piece of timber clogging the bottom of the crusher jaws. Pulled out offending article to discover it wasnt timber, but a "ladies best friend" made of rubber. How did that end up in a skip full of bricks?..........:rock:
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:17 am
by Dave_L
Nasty!!!!
While doing some patch repairs in the highway next to some of our recently laid kerbs, we found a freshly used and filled condom right in our newly tacked up area!!! Hell knows where it 'came' from!
Needless to say, we didn't bury it in the new tarmac. 