What else will I find buried in my garden

[Ginnymweasley]

About 6 months ago we bought a new house. The person who owned it before us had lived here since the 1970s and the decor showed that. We have spent the last few months trying to make a dent on the green walls and floral carpets and get rid of the woodchip that is 3 layers deep. We decided this week to make a start on the garden. One half is lawn the other half is rubble and weeds pretty much. We want to lay patio there so needed to flatten it all out. Turns out it's a rubbish dump. So far we have dug out :
The shell of a freezer,
A dashboard
A car radiator
10 paint cans
A tin with best before 1992 on the bottom
5 ice packs
17 bits of unidentified metal
4 tyres.
We have only dug up 1/3 of it. I have just ordered a bigger skip.
Why would someone do this???

Dunno but it sounds like a great solution to all the junk in my mum's garage. I think the house is just about to gain the world's biggest rockery in the garden... however always up for a challenge I will guess you will find a baby's cot, a rotting mattress, several broken plant pots and a black and Decker workmate

Btw are you allowed to put a freezer in a skip?

The ground will be pretty toxic after all that has been festering there. You’ll need to put something back to try to neutralise it. Where I work the ground was a rubbish dump for the house and nothing grows in some areas, still so toxic.

Freezer doesnt have any of the working parts so no gas cylinders. It's just a rusty shell. We put a shovel through the top of it when we were digging. DH is getting some advice on if it can definitely be disposed in the skip but we think it can be. If not I have no clue what I'm gonna do with it.

dobby I hadn't thought about that. We were just planning on paving over it. What sort of stuff do I need to find? 2 days ago i thought it was just gonna be a load of soil and mud..... regretting starting it now tbh.

I know someone who decided to dismantle the large rockery in the back garden of their newly purchased house, only to find there was an old and decaying Morris minor underneath it..

My friend found 6 rusty pushbikes and every shovel load came up with broken glass jars and old tin cans
She lived next to what used to be the tip and thinks they just poured it into a hole

What do you do if you find a car? Why do people bury things?

This was the done thing years ago.

A lovely lady I know bought a small holding and like you was digging up all sorts of junk. One day she found a human skull and excitedly called her daughter out and the pair of them carefully dug around it (they were both eccentric and excited by the find not remotely troubled) and the excavated the head of a mannequin which they found hilarious.

It’s cleaned up and adorned with jewellery nowadays!

It used to be the norm. I found a block of decaying batteries in the ground one time.

My relatives buried a Rolls Royce shell (removed the doors, seats etc) then covered with soil barring a small entrance to get in it. It made an excellent air raid shelter in WW2. Family legend says they filled it in and it may well be in a garden in Keynsham to this day

When we were kids the garden was considerably higher one end. Dad went to level it.. Found a car. 2 motorbikes and a tonne of car parts.

This afternoon we have found some more car parts, 2 copper kettles, some plant pots and the remains of a silver Christmas tree. And a buoy.

Our house was built on a tennis court. In some bits of the garden there are less than 30cm soil before you hit tennis court surface.

In our last house, we discovered that in the 1940s the house was owned by a rag and bone man, who buried all his left over rubbish in the garden. That was at least buried a good 1m down, and we only found it when we had some new drains laid.

Did you buy my grandmother's house?! Pretty sure there's an entire piano in their garden.