An Edinburgh mum has been left flabbergasted after discovering a 135-year-old message in a bottle underneath the floorboards in her Morningside home.
Mum-of-two Eilidh Stimpson couldn't believe her eyes as she read out the hand-written message on the withered note, which had been rolled up inside an empty whisky bottle since the day the floor was laid.
The Victorian time capsule was discovered on Monday by local plumber Peter Allan who just happened to cut through the exact place in the floorboards where it had been left on October 6, 1887.
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"It's pretty cool," Eilidh, who works as a GP, told Edinburgh Live. "And so lucky as well, because we were meant to be moving a radiator from one side of the wall to the other. The plumber came and started cutting a hole and said it was going to be a bit of a nightmare as there was a floor on top of a floor.
"Then he came down the stairs going, 'look at what I just found in the hole I just made!'. It was quite exciting."
Amazed by what Peter had found, Eilidh decided to wait until her two children, aged 8 and 10, got home from school before opening the cork on the bottle and reading what was contained inside.
"They were super-excited," said Eilidh, describing her kids' reaction. "When I picked them up from school I said 'I've got the most exciting thing to tell you' - to which they asked: 'are we having hot dogs for tea?' 'More exciting than that,' I said!
"My 8-year-old is in P4 and actually learning about the Victorians right now, which is great."
Once Eilidh's partner got home from work, the family tried getting the message out of the bottle, but to no avail. In the end they realised they were going to have to break the glass to avoid tearing the historic note.
Eilidh explained: "We were desperately trying to get the note out with tweezers and pliers, but it started to rip a little bit. We didn't want to damage it further, so regrettably had to smash the bottle."
Untouched for an astonishing 7,049 weeks and four days, the message written on the mysterious parchment was finally revealed.
Signed and dated by two male workers, the message read: “James Ritchie and John Grieve laid this floor, but they did not drink the whisky. October 6th 1887. Who ever finds this bottle may think our dust is blowing along the road.”
Intrigued to find out more about the workers, a friend of Eilidh's conducted a bit of research and found that there were two men registered as living in the Newington area by the same names in the 1880s.
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Following his incredible discovery, plumber Peter Allan, who works with Bruntsfield firm WF Wightman, told us: "It's all a bit strange, but what a find! Where I cut the hole in the floor, is exactly where the bottle was located, which is crazy and so random."
On Wednesday, Eilidh took to social media to share her family's incredible find with the community.
Eilidh added: "We've just been amazingly lucky, and I'm glad everyone thinks it's as interesting as we do. It feels quite nice to have a positive news story amid all this doom and gloom that's around at the moment.
"Now, I'm thinking we need to preserve the note and replace it with a message of our own for future generations to discover."
Responding to Eilidh's post on the I Love Morningside page on Facebook, Lucie McAus commented: "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 timeframe from the past."
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