WEST SUSSEX, ENGLAND—The Midhurst and Petworth Observer reports that conservationists recovered artifacts dating to the late seventeenth century while repairing marble tiles in Petworth House. The tiles had been laid on a bed made up of layers of sand, gravel, and marble chippings on the floor of the formal entrance to the mansion, which was built by the sixth Duke of Somerset in the 1690s. The floor has not been disturbed since the 1920s, when a few of the tiles were moved to install electricity in the house. The artifacts include a fragment of a seventeenth-century pottery drinking vessel thought to have been imported from Germany; an oyster shell that may have been part of a worker’s lunch; and a piece of a lead window frame that may have been part of the medieval house that stood on the property before Petworth House was built. For more, go to “The Many Lives of an English Manor House.”
