Used back in the 1600s to counteract the curse of a witch, Randa form Cliftonville didn't expect to find the item when doing building work on her house. Finn Macdiarmid reports.
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00:00Everything about it has just been a little bit creepy.
00:09During some building work being done in her home in Cliftonville,
00:12Rhonda Kachef discovered a decorated bottle sealed with concrete. Not knowing what to do with it,
00:17she took it to an archaeologist who discovered it was a witch bottle,
00:21an item that could potentially date back to the 1600s.
00:24Well, I've come down to Maidstone to see what Kent's archaeological experts make
00:28of what could be a very magical discovery.
00:32So a witch bottle is a piece of apotropaic magic or protective magic. So the idea was in the height
00:39of the kind of the witch craze of the 16th and 17th century, you would fill a bottle with urine,
00:46bent nails, bone, works, pieces of wood, sometimes felt heart. If you were you or something you
00:53cared about was afflicted by witchcraft, the bottle would cause the witch who had placed
00:58the hex on you serious discomfort. It's one of up to 300 found across the country,
01:05but this bottle was unique. They scanned and dated it in a radiography lab and discovered
01:10it was actually from the 18th to 19th century, potentially 200 years younger than a normal find.
01:16In official documents, her house was listed as being more than 150 years old
01:20and used to be an alehouse, so she said she wanted to learn more about the history behind
01:24why the bottle was there and who might have put it there, as it was inside the foundations of
01:29the building when it was found. Though she doesn't believe in superstition, after Rhonda
01:33had removed the bottle from the ground, she started hearing things.
01:36As soon as the bottle was in view, the house felt weird. We were hearing noises in the wall
01:44and in the crawlspace that we'd never heard before. But as soon as the bottle left and went to Andy,
01:50we stopped hearing these noises.
01:52So she decided to make her own to replace the original, using red wine instead of urine,
01:57shells and seaweed from Margate's beaches, all contained in a bottle she'd gotten as a gift.
02:02She used materials all from the past four or five years, like a cork from 2023,
02:06meaning if it was found many years on, that historians would be able to date it back to today.
02:11Even though it might not be protecting Rhonda's house against the curses of a witch anymore,
02:15the archaeologists want to examine the layers of its exterior, with the idea to eventually find
02:20it a place in a museum in Margate or stay with the Kent Archaeological Society in Maidstone.
02:26Finn McDermid for KMTV