AN excavation team salvaged 1,000 BOTTLES from the Waitrose site last week - in a bid to create a unique social history project on Helensburgh.

Archaeologist Fiona Baker, whose professional career has taken her to the pyramids in Egypt, is excited to work on her home turf.

Last week, Fiona, alongside a team with Alastair McIntyre, Mike Thornley and David Doherty, dug four turrets on the Colgrain site, which was used by local authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a bottle landfill site.

The excavation team recovered over 1,000 household bottles, including food, drink and medicine containers.

Fiona, 48, will lead a team of volunteers to painstakingly clean each bottle, eventually creating a social history of Helensburgh. She wants the project - called Project Helensburgh: A Message in a Bottle - to culminate in a book and a permanent display of the bottles.

She explained: "Instead of recycling bottles like we do today, bottles were buried at the site between around 1894 and 1929 by local authorities.

"This was back when everything was packaged in glass bottles and not plastic like today.

"I decided it would be good to get on the site before the building of the new Waitrose starts so we could gather the social history of Helensburgh.

"The developer Drum Property very kindly allowed me on site for a week and provided a machine and an operator to dig four trenches. The bottles will now be cleaned up and offer a fascinating insight into what people were eating and drinking in Helensburgh, and what medicines they were taking, as well as reflecting a lot about health and wealth.

"What brand loyalty did people have and what were the bestsellers? What can they tell us about Helensburgh retailers that were around then? For example we found a lot of Harvey Chemist bottles which I know are from the old chemist which was on East Princes Street." Fiona will now apply for grant funding so the history bottles can be explored further and hopes to involve Hermitage Academy and Lomond School.

She said: "Both Lomond and Hermitage want to be involved. Now we need to develop a much finer project design. A lot of things would fall into the curriculum for excellence such as analysis, drawing, building databases.

"There is a whole range of projects we will be able to do with the material and it is also hoped that some of it can be used in the CHORD Project maybe in Colquhoun Square, something impermanent. However, we hope that one day there will be a permanent location." Fiona has also called on residents to get in touch if they have any old bottles which could be of significance.

She said: "I know quite a lot of people went down and dug when the gas pipe went down between Cardross and Helensburgh a decade ago.

"Bottle digging is a popular hobby and if anybody has any interesting bottles they recovered from that, it would be great if they could even send me any pictures to add to our research." Contact Fiona at fiona@scottish-archaeology.com.

A 21-year old man was reported to the procurator fiscal for allegedly being in possession of drugs in East King Street on Monday, October 29.

A MAN was stopped on the A82 near Tarbet during a vehicle check and was found to be allegedly in possession of a controlled drug. The 40-year-old man was reported to the procurator fiscal following the incident on the morning of Saturday, October 27.