A SCOTS tradie was left amazed after finding a 134-year-old message in a bottle hidden underneath the floorboards of a customer’s home.
Peter Allan was doing plumbing work at a house in the Morningside area of Edinburgh yesterday when he cut away some flooring and noticed a bottle discreetly hidden beneath.
The 50-year-old pulled the whisky bottle out, discovering there was a note carefully tucked inside.
Peter and home owner Eilidh Stimpson were amazed to discover it had been hidden there in 1887 by what were presumably two workmen.
Images show the glass bottle, complete with a weathered cork, laid inside the hole beneath the floorboards, surrounded by chips of wood and dust.
The note itself is written in a flowing, cursive fashion, scrawled on yellowing parchment paper.
The note reads: “James Ritchie and John Grieve laid this floor but they did not drink the whisky. October 6th 1887.
“Whoever finds this bottle may think our dust is blowing along the road”.
Eilidh took to social media yesterday to share her shock at the findings.
She wrote: “Interesting find by Peter from Wightman Plumbing when lifting floorboards in our home in Morningside. A little piece of history.”
The post has received dozens of likes and comments as many expressed their amazement at the historical find.
Lucie McAus said: “I don’t think they ever could have predicted when they wrote it, that you would be able to take a photograph using a device no bigger than your hand and put it instantly on a platform that could reach the entire community in a few seconds. Incredible.
“If you place one for the next person who knows how it would be discovered and the information shared. What a lovely time frame from the past.”
Lucy Reddish said: “I love this, Eilidh. I hope you made one too and added it in for the next person in 100 years.”
Rama Dasa said: “What whisky was it? If unlabelled, then it may have been purchased off the barrel at a licensed grocers or public house.”
Zahrine Neary said: “How amazing, Eilidh. Nice handwriting too.”
Maggie Shearer added: “Fascinating.”
Speaking today, Peter said: “I was just doing my job. I was moving pipes for a radiator and I cut a random hole in the floor to see where the pipes were.
“There was a first floor, a second and a third floor. So, I saw the bottle and gave it to Eilidh.
“She said she wanted to wait until her kids were home to open it because they would be really excited.
“They couldn’t get it open, so they smashed it to read the note.”
For much of the 1800s, Bourbon and Rye whisky bottles were sold to distillers from barrels and were often seen as much cleaner than drinking unfiltered water.
Three years after the placement of the whisky bottle in question, laws changed so that whisky was no longer allowed to be sold in barrels but instead, in glass bottles that were purchased from local public houses or distillers.
