Colchester Bottle Collectors Club was formed early in the 1970’s and was part of the British Bottle Collectors Club, which is now sadly de-funct. The club has always had a hardcore of regular diggers who frankly love to dig, no matter what they might find.
Digging for bottles in Colchester is different to digging in any other part of the country. Colchester Town is the oldest recorded town in England and has certainly revealed some superb finds, both in the Roman artefacts and in the old bottles categories. Some of the most popular Roman and Saxon finds can be viewed by visiting the Colchester Castle Museum. Many of the greatest digging finds were found in the 1980’s when the lower Castle River was dredged, leaving behind lots of bottles just resting on the river bed. It was here that Dave Van Loon pulled out a marvellous Bellarmine jug. Some other finds included early stone dated tankards, various free blown bottles and some fine early stoneware. Unlike other clubs, our main tips were discovered and dug extensively in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s with three large Victorian / Edwardian tips that certified us regular digging for over 25 year.
Colchester has some superb minerals on offer that include coloured lip codds, coloured marbles, a range of Sykes McVay dimple patents, coloured dumpy codds, early hybrids and one superb pictorial ovate shaped Edward’s patent. We also have coloured pictorial seltzers and probably the earliest dated blue lipped ginger beers from the company of Stopes and Sons. Other notable local rarities that have been found close to Colchester include the Britannia, Kelvedon red lipped acme patents (originally Britannia Fruit Preserve Co.) Cracknells of Brightlingsea and Kettles of Harwich green codds plus the pictorial hybrids from Chelmsford. Finally we must not forget the superb Bacon’s of Burnham-On-Crouch blue topped ginger beer of which only few are known to have been discovered. For good reason, most of these bottles, when discovered soon disappear into local collections.
Colchester Bottle Collectors Club has been run by Martin Bloomfield since 1982 at Belle Vue Social Club and Stanway Scout Hut, and has now been joined by grandson Lee Bloomfield at their new venue - Stanway Rovers Football Club. Anyone is welcome to attend to showcase their collections and have a stall from which they can trade. We meet on the last Thursday of every month* and have loyal regulars who attend from Essex, Kent, Ipswich and Cambridge. Please view other pages on our website for information on recent digs, the Colchester Brewing Company and Wanted items.