"WASTE OF TIME TEAM" DIG.

Philip (Phil) Harding (born 1950) is a British field archaeologist who has been a regular member of the Time Team from the first series in 1994 to the present. (Photograph by Anthony James, taken at the Clipstone dig.)

  King John's Palace, Kings Clipstone, as photographed by David Hallam, during the recent Time Team dig. David managed to take this and the following photographs before being escorted from the site. Although he had assisted the Time team on the Codnor Castle dig he was not allowed on site at Clipstone!

BIRMINGHAM BUTTONS

(Knight’s Penny Magazine for the diffusion of useful knowledge 1844)

Buttons are among the most remarkable manufactures of Birmingham, and one of the few which are conducted on what may fittingly be termed the factory-system, since there are establishments in which some hundreds of persons (five or six hundred in one instance) are employed in one building, all making buttons. It is indeed surprising to see the extent to which so trifling an article influences manufactures, when once it has become a ruling item of fashion.

Button-makers are now among the best-employed artisans of the town. Half a century ago Hutton spoke of the button-trade at Birmingham in the following quaint terms “This beautiful ornament appears with infinite variation; and though the original date is rather uncertain, yet we well remember the long coats of our grandfather’s covered with half a gross of high-top, and the cloaks of our grandmothers ornamented with a horn button nearly the size of a crown-piece, curiously wrought, as having passed through the Birmingham press.”

Though the common round button keeps in with the steady pace of the day, yet we sometimes see the oval, the square, the pea, and the pyramid flash into existence. In some branches of traffic the wearer calls loudly for new fashions; but in this the fashions tread upon each other and crowd upon the wearer. The consumption of this article is astonishing, and the value from three-pence a gross to one hundred and forty guineas.

There seem to be hidden treasures couched within this magic circle, known only to a few, who extract prodigious fortunes out of this useful toy, whilst a far greater number submit to the statute of bankruptcy. Trade is like a restive horse and can rarely be managed; for where one is carried to the end of a successful journey, many are thrown off by the way. Buttons, it must be owned, are not now such splendid affairs as they were in Hutton's time, but the trade has probably vastly increased in extent.

The materials of which buttons arc made are very various, and this variety gives rise to a subdivision somewhat akin to that which we have already noticed although not so marked. Besides the well known gilt buttons, plain and figured, there are plated silk, florentine, and other covered buttons, pearl, horn, shell, bone, wood, glass, and porcelain buttons, and probably many others.

The establishments of Mr. Elliott and of Messrs. Hammond and Turner, two of those in which buttons are made to a vast amount, are among the most inter­esting in Birmingham. The former of these factories consists of a number of distinct buildings encompassing an open area or court, and each devoted to a particular kind of button-making, or a particular department of the general manufacture. The number of females to which the process gives employment is very large, and the nimbleness with which most of the processes are carried on by them is truly remarkable..                                                                                                                             (To be continued if so required………….)