Friend found this hidden in a mud and stud wall while renovating a 300year old windmill/bakery. Says it’s still corked with something inside it.

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image showing Friend found this hidden in a mud and stud wall while renovating a 300year old windmill/bakery. Says it’s still corked with something inside it.

MartimusPrime83 on December 12nd, 2019 at 10:29 UTC »

My friend is renovating a 300year old windmill and bakery in Lincolnshire, England. Upon fixing a mud and stood wall, this little bottle dropped out. He says the writing on the front is legible but the writing on the back is difficult to read. There are apparently lines for serving measurements. He says it’s corked still with something inside. Any info would be great. Cheers

Hedgerow_Snuffler on December 12nd, 2019 at 11:19 UTC »

Building Archaeologist here, Please pay attention to this, Your friend may have found a Witch Bottle!

These are a traditional 'protective magical statement" of a kind known in folklore circles as apotropaic magic. It's intended to deflect bad stuff from the property it was installed in. Often they were made using Stoneware Bottles ( a type called a bartman jug or bellarmine were a common choice of vessel) but yours is a much more interesting in that it's a datable glass bottle

Wikipedia Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_bottle

There is currently a UK project to record these. They are often uncovered during building works and destroyed by accident or discarded after discovery.

LInk: https://wildhunt.org/2019/05/the-great-hunt-for-witch-bottles-project.html

-- EDIT --

A lot of people are asking stuff about this, so a brief potted summary.

Witch Bottles sit in a grey area somewhere between folk-belief, magic and good old superstition. They are one facet in a range of witchcraft counter-charms in the UK and Western Europe through the 16th to the 19th Centuries. Primarially their purpose is to deflect bad luck / magic / malicious intent away from a house or its occupants.

Given how long these were in use, we know surprisingly little about them today and study of Apotropaic folk magic has only really flourished in the last 20 years. Little of this was written down in contemporary sources and of course none of it is consistent, with practices changing over time and from region to region.

Simply it is a container, that you fill with hair, urine, scraps from clothing along with pins, needles or iron nails, and then conceal in an entry point to the building (under the doorstep, below a window, in the chimney breast) The organics from family members would 'soak up bad spells intended for those people, and things like pins, nails and such were believed (we think) to somehow 'reflect' damage back onto the caster. In some parts of the UK and Normandy there is a belief a Witch cannot cross a threshold or enter a building where one of these was concealed.

Witch Bottles are just one Apotropaic item sometimes found in historic buildings, others include shoes, gloves and hats in spaces up inside the chimney, Dead cats entombed in walls, Horse skulls under the floor or inserted into the thatching on the roof.

And none of this is to be confused with this item stored in a drawer in the Pitt Rivers Collection in Oxford. Which is not a Witch Bottle, but in fact is a Witch-in-a-bottle! Totally different thing.