I have fond memories of the first time I went 'bottle hunting' with my father on a local dump in Yeovil, Somerset. My uncle had told my Dad about digging for bottles and invited him & I along. This was back in 1974 and I was 12 years old. I don't remember what we found, probably the usual, Keiller Marmalade pots, Bovrils and a few Venos' Cough Cures.
One Saturday morning shortly afterwards, Dad dropped me off at another dump in Yeovil on his way to work and before he returned I had found my first Codd - a Yeovil 10oz 'TRASK'.

With my hard saved pocket money I bought a book 'BOTTLE COLLECTING' by Edward Fletcher. I spent many hours thumbing through this book and must have read every word hundreds of times. The small section on Codd bottles did not really explain much about the different variations, only that .... Codd and his family had over 50 modifications to his patent of 1875 and that pear shaped marbles were very rare.

So for a few years I continued digging with my Dad and younger brother, unaware of the numerous variations of Codd's original bottle. All the ones I found that I already had, were left behind although I must admit this was not very many.

Years later I moved to Portland in Dorset and re-kindled my interest in bottle hunting when I found a very good Victorian dump. I spent a lot of time there and made some good fellow bottle digging friends. I remember looking at their collections' and being amazed at the different types of codds they had, blue and red lipped, coloured marbles, ones with different lugs and stopper systems, codds that had Hamilton shaped bases and the prize; a Green 'South Dorset Mineral Water Co.' codd.

I started buying books, subscribing to magazines and joined a local Bottle Club in Bournemouth, Dorset to further my knowledge of Codd and his Bottles.

I started "CODDS §TUFF" for my own benefit in 2001 so that I could have all the information I had gathered in one place and to monitor current prices, most of which comes from an internet auction site called Ebay. All the descriptions below the pictures are written by the seller - I have corrected some spellings but that's all.

All the information within this CD is my interpretation of what I believe to be true. Together with a lot of reading, I have visited Museums - one in particular in Somerset, the Public Records Office at Kew and the British Library both in London and had numerous correspondences with the Patents Office at Newport in South Wales, to assist my research.