Hamiltons, Cucumbers and Cylinders

Study discovers history in the bottles
that Preston folk simply threw away

A UCLan MA dissertation by Rachael Bryson on the changing shapes of bottles made in Preston between 1830 and 1930 traces their development from the stoneware bottles of the early 19th century to the glass bottles recognisable today. Hamiltons, Cucumbers and Cylinders are just some of the shapes in which those bottles came.

A cottage industry existed in town supplying the thirst for such soft drinks as ginger beer. Rachael provides an example:

‘One such outlet in Preston presents us with perhaps one of the rarest and most sought after Preston bottles, that of the ‘Mary Battle’ slab seal stoneware bottle. At the moment this bottle is recorded to exist in very small numbers, as low as two or three, in private collections. It is likely that Mary Battle chose to sell her product in stoneware bottles, as ginger beer was known to ‘burst cork’ due to fermentation taking place after the bottle was sealed. Ginger beer was also a particularly cloudy brew with heavy sediment in the early days, before it became possible to produce a clear extract of ginger, whose murky appearance was perhaps best disguised in stoneware as opposed to glass bottles …’

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Read and download Rachael’s dissertation:
How and why did the design and production of Preston bottles change during the period 1830-1930?

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Disappointing for today’s bottle collectors is the lack of the coloured designs on the Preston bottles, unlike those found on bottles sold in other parts of the country. Rachael has an explanation:

‘It would appear that the drinks manufacturers of Preston simply wanted a cheap and practical vessel from which to sell their wares and not to leave behind what essentially became the ‘pretty rubbish’ that today’s collectors are thankful for. Perhaps catering for the needs of a growing industrial town simply needed cheap, practical containers that served their purpose. The workers choking on cotton dust in Preston’s many mills would probably not give a second thought to the bottle from which they drank the soothing liquid.’

A hundred years before the swivel corks seen today on Grolsch beer bottles, such corks were in use in Preston, shortly after they were introduced into Britain from America.

One of the many shapes that bottles took were the ‘Hamiltons’ whose origin can possibly be traced back to the 18th century to a Jacob Schweppe of Geneva. Preston examples are much prized:

‘Preston is however able to lay claim to some interesting and rare ‘hamiltons’ and variations. Every collector has their ‘Holy Grail’ and most Preston collectors would be keen to own the slab seals, blue top gingers or green top Meadowcroft patent Haysworth bottles – but one bottle known to exist is almost a thing of legend. The tale relates to some bottles found when building work was taking place in the town and land was being cleared to make way for a retail park. When digging the foundations builders unearthed the fabled ‘cobalt blue hamilitons’ marked ‘Beaumont Preston’. These bottles were soon spirited away or changed hands for good money – it all happened so quickly that sources cannot even remember who was lucky enough to leave with one that day.’

These had possibly contained poison, for blue was the colour chosen to distinguish such contents by the chemists of the town, of whom Mr Beaumont was one. Other bottles guaranteed the safety of their contents in the days when public supplies of drinking water were not to be trusted. Brewed and bottled beer was regarded as safer than much of the drinking water supply, although frowned on by the town’s temperance campaigners who promoted the sale of non-intoxicating beverages.

Mass-produced bottles have today’s collectors divided with some bottle diggers refusing to dig post-1920 tips, preferring to seek the rarer specimens produced in small numbers. Later bottles with paper labels glued on are prized, however, by all collectors. Bottle collecting reflects ‘the old adage “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure”.’