That was the first thing Johanna Keane, now 43 and living in Arklow, noticed.
asserted
Keane → live → Arklow
She was crouched on the back strand at Bray, Co Wicklow, turning over something caked so thick in mud she couldn’t tell if it was glass, stone or nothing at all.
asserted
it → crouch → mud
She brought it home anyway and ran it under the tap.
asserted
She → bring → tap
It was forest green, mouth-blown into a mould, its rim applied by hand rather than machine-formed – she realised it was the unmistakable shape of a Victorian poison bottle.
asserted
it → blow → bottle
Down the side, still legible after more than a century in the mud, were four words: NOT TO BE TAKEN.
Most people would have walked straight past it but Johanna didn’t.
asserted
Johanna → take → it
Across Ireland, a small but growing number of people have started looking down – at low tide, on riverbanks, on beaches scraped bare by winter storms – for whatever the water has thrown up.
asserted
water → grow → whatever
It’s called mudlarking, a name borrowed from Victorian London, where children once picked through the Thames mud for anything they could sell.
uncertain
they → call → anything
These days, people across Ireland are doing it too, uncovering fragments of the lives lived before them.
asserted
people → do → them
Johanna’s own collection has grown well beyond the poison bottle.
asserted
collection → grow → bottle
There’s a shard of uranium glass that glows an eerie green under UV light – it is the find that really hooked her after she moved to Ireland from England in 2015.
asserted
she → ’ → 2015
‘You’d see like a tiny hand sticking out of the soil,’ she says.
asserted
she → see → soil
Some are plastic and modern, many are older, made of bisque, with painted glass eyes that can be slightly unnerving even when you know what you’re looking at.
asserted
you → make → what
‘I think my family think they might be haunted,’ she says, matter-of-factly.
uncertain
she → think → ?
It is, she seems to suggest, just another part of the hobby.
asserted
she → seem → hobby
One day you’re pulling an old coin from the mud, the next, you’re finding a tiny doll’s hand sticking out of the ground.
asserted
you → pull → ground
Her strangest find isn’t glamorous at all – pairs of women’s tights, buried for decades and preserved almost perfectly by the nylon they were made from.
asserted
they → bury → nylon
‘Some of them, you could almost still wear them,’ she says.
uncertain
she → wear → them
Fascinating discoveries are made by mudlarkers such as this hot water bottle
The poison bottle, she estimates, is worth around €150.
asserted
she → make → bottle
But it could easily have ended up in the bin.
uncertain
it → end → bin
‘It’s something people might just walk past, or kick out of the way,’ she says.
uncertain
she → ’ → way
Ronald van Dijk, 49, spends his working days ferrying medicines between chemists, nursing homes and hospitals across Galway.
asserted
Dijk → spend → Galway
At low tide, his attention turns to something else.
asserted
attention → turn → something
Mudlarking is what he does with his time off, but unlike Johanna, he is less interested in the objects themselves than in the strangers who once carried them, lost them or left them behind.
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who → do → them
‘Just a pair of good eyes and a pair of wellies,’ he says when asked what equipment it takes.
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it → say → equipment
No metal detector, no specialist gear, nothing that costs money.
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that → cost → money
Originally from Holland and in Ireland for 25 years, he took up the hobby on a whim after a friend showed him mudlarking videos filmed on the Thames foreshore.
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friend → take → foreshore
One low tide at Galway Bay produced pipe stems and bottles from the 1920s and 30s, and he was hooked.
asserted
he → produce → 1920s
‘Every time we found something, it was just a thrill,’ he says.
asserted
he → find → something
‘‘You’re focused on the ground, under the seaweed and between the rocks.
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You → focus → rocks
It’s like fishing.
asserted
It → ’ → fishing
Some days you catch nothing, other days you fill a bag.
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you → catch → bag
Sometimes he brings his dog and Hunter has picked up the habit by watching him – nosing along the shoreline at Galway Bay until he turns up an old lemonade bottle from the 1950s.
asserted
he → bring → 1950s
‘Thank you, Hunter,’ Ronald tells him.
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Ronald → thank → him
Another time it was the worn wooden handle of a Victorian handsaw, with a small metal escutcheon that he cleaned up to reveal the maker’s name – an Irishman who’d set up his own business in the 1870s.
asserted
who → clean → 1870s
‘It’s worth nothing,’ Ronald says, ‘but it’s just nice to find a bit of old, old history.’
asserted
it → ’ → history
One of his stranger finds – a tiny copper ‘oiler’, once used for oiling a rifle – he traced, after a Google image search, to an arms factory near Birmingham.
asserted
he → use → Birmingham
It’s the mystery of it that gets him.
asserted
that → ’ → him
‘Somebody carried it, years ago, at some stage,’ he says.
asserted
he → carry → stage
‘You wonder who.’
asserted
You → wonder → who
His Facebook group, Mudlarking Ireland, now has more than 5,500 members, all doing the same thing on their own patch of coast, wondering about the people behind the objects they find.
asserted
they → have → objects
…and 71 more, not listed.
The Aporia
