Preserved in Time: 13,000 Crosse & Blackwell containers discovered at Crossrail site

The new Elizabeth line station by Crossrail at Tottenham Court Road has given us fascinating new insight into the origins of the British obsession with condiments.

Our archaeologists have excavated over 13,000 well-preserved 19th and 20th century Crosse & Blackwell pickle pots, glass bottles and jam jars from the Crossrail site at Tottenham Court Road, formerly the site of Crosse & Blackwell's premises. The discovery offers a peek into the past and the development of products which still sit within kitchen cupboards around the world today.

 The finds include glass bottles for Mushroom Catsup, ceramic bung jars for mustard and Piccalilli and delicately painted white jars for Preserved Ginger. Archaeologists also found white earthenware jars for Pure Orange Marmalade, Household Raspberry Jam and Plum Jam, some of which still bare their original labels. They illustrate the ambitions of one of Victorian Britain’s most prolific and enduring enterprises and evidence the development of British tastes.

“Excavations on Crosse & Blackwell’s Soho factory produced a large and diverse collection of pottery and glass related to their products, with one cistern alone containing nearly three tonnes of Newcastle made marmalade jars with stoneware bottles and jars. We think this is the biggest collection of pottery ever discovered in a single feature from an archaeological site in London.”  Nigel Jeffries, our Medieval and Later Pottery Specialist and author of the book

Archaeologists were given access to the site, next to Charing Cross Road in the heart of London’s West End, as Crossrail engineers built the new Elizabeth line station. Crosse & Blackwell manufactured, bottled and packaged their products on this site until 1921, which according to one Daily Graphic journalist led to “a very distinctive pungency to the surrounding atmosphere” and more directly, a “suffocating effluvium” according to the local Medical Officer for Health at the time.

The area was known for being a hive of industrial activity, but Crosse & Blackwell’s facilities appealed to companies like Lea & Perrins, who outsourced aspects of their business to the Crosse & Blackwell factory. Evidence of this has been found in the form of Lea & Perrins branded glass stoppers.