Attic Treasure

I use the word 'treasure' in a tongue-in-cheek way, because on our recent foray into the attic, we didn't find any antique vases, stashes of gold or chests of jewels.




What we did find was:

• A folder containing plans for a dormer bungalow and a housing development.
• The original metal curtain rail from our dining room.
• Some polystyrene ceiling tiles (what a mercy they weren't installed somewhere in the house!!).
• A box from Bourne and Hollingsworth Department Store on Oxford Street, London, post-marked 1954.
• A sack from Baxton and Guion Potato Merchants in Peterborough, dated 1951.
• A sack from S. Squires and Sons Ltd. in Leicester.
• A moth-eaten dress, most probably 1950's, littered with the bodies of moth larvae.  It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.  The skirt was tweedy and the top was like a camisole, so maybe it would have had a matching jacket original to go over the top.
• Some wooden planks.
• Sections of polystyrene lagging for pipes. 

The most interesting find for me was the department store box, as I hadn't heard of Bourne and Hollingsworth (apart from the modern vintage events company, which has obviously taken its name from the store).  It seems it had quite a presence on Oxford Street until the 1980s, surviving bombing in WWII and having an Art Deco makeover in the late 1920s.

I wonder what was in the box?  Something fancy I bet!  It was marked as 'Mrs Watkins, c/o Mrs Thomas', followed by our address.  Perhaps Mrs Watkins was a friend or relative of Mrs Thomas?  We'd heard from some elderly neighbours that a previous occupant of our house was a vicar, so maybe I should now be looking for Reverend Thomas.  I should get my Mum on the case, because she's a Family and Local History expert, even if that's not her day job!  Perhaps she can find out why there's such a link to the Midlands, as we're in Wales so those potatoes must have travelled a fair way...

Have you found anything interesting when you've moved into a place?