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'Witch Bottle' from Roughlee Hall
OUR column feature this week goes back in time around 30 years and depicts a young Crambie taking down the original Burnley Road Post Office sign in Colne for my "Olde Colne" collection.
The picture is in answer to a young lady at my recent "Antiques Roadshow" lecture. She asked: "Just what is the largest item in your collection?"
Well here it is, a huge and unique piece of postal history preserved for all time.
If the metal and enamel yellow and black sign is the largest item in my Colne cache of treasures, what you may ask is the smallest?
This just has to be my 1910 200-page "History of England" leather-bound miniature book measuring an amazing one inch by three-quarter inch from the archive of Mr Colne himself, E.W. Folley.
And indeed, inside on the title page is his signature in violet ink signed 100 years ago!
Largest, smallest, how about the oldest?
This is a copper Roman coin circa AD85 depicting Agricola and found on Caster Cliff in 1951 by my dear old Lord Street schoolteacher Fred Melling.
In just 75 years' time, the ancient coin will be 2,000 years old!
So how about the rarest item in my entire collection?
Well, around a decade ago, I bid at Christie's auction rooms 2,875 for a signature on a 1911 Christmas card of the Colne-born RMS Titanic bandmaster, the heroic Wallace Hartley. I was the highest bidder, bringing the true rarity back to bonnie Colne.
Last year, as I appeared on "Antiques Roadshow", leading autograph authority Paul Viney said: "It's the rarest signature I've ever seen and has a value of around eight-and-a-half thousand pounds!"
We've had largest, smallest, oldest and rarest, how about the heaviest?
We have several candidates for the title in my collection.
Enormous, carved stone finials from the tragically now-demolished Alkincoates Hall, Emmott Hall and Heirs House are heavyweights indeed, as is a three-foot length of the now-defunct Colne to Skipton railway line from under Barrowford Road bridge.
However, the winner is a four foot three inch section of the Colne tram track taken up in 1935.
It came from by Colne Town Hall and takes at least three strong people to carry it!
Well, let's finish our look at my artefact collection with the strangest object.
This has to be my rare antediluvian "Witch Bottle" which was given to me years ago by my good friend Jimmy Crewdson, who lived at none other than the historic Roughlee Hall.
Jimmy, whose nickname was "Woodsmoke", was a marvellous character who always maintained the ancient "Witch Bottle" was genuine, having been found in the hall's outbuildings in the 1920s.
Inside the strange and weird bottle are gruesome objects and these from time to time appear to change shape and even new eerie entities can be seen!
There is no doubt the curious and bizarre bottle is the strangest of all my many memorabilia items.
That is just a taste of my ever-growing collection of memorabilia reflecting teh history of Colne and the surrounding area. There will be more on the oddities and the unusual coming soon in our weekly column.
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Weather for Pendle
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Light sleet
Temperature: 0 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: West
