RSS
You don’t seem to see them around much these days, but time was when people used to save up all their loose change in a giant whiskey bottle. I never had one personally, but I remember my cousin having one, and it seems everyone knew someone who had one at some point.
The bottles themselves were normally for Bells Whiskey, and were huge. I’ve never seen bottles of whiskey this big for sale before, they were more like the size of the big champagne bottles that get sprayed everywhere at the end of a Formula 1 race.
I can only assume the bottles were used in pubs where whiskey was much in demand, as they would have been far too big for home consumption (unless you really like whiskey of course).
At the end of the day, people would empty out their pockets and pour any unwanted small coinage into the neck of the bottle. After several months a reasonably decent collection of coins could have built up, and with mixed coinage it was probably possible to get upwards of fifty quids worth of cash in there.
Acknowledgement to The Tovells personal blog, from where I got the image accompanying this post.
The bottles come from pubs where they are attached to optics. Not sure how easy they are to get these days as the bottle is probably worth as much as the scotch (without the tax).
My other half bought one with her when she moved in she picked up when working as a barmaid but it’s long since broken.
Thanks for the confirmation on where the bottles came from sparkes. Pubs seemed like the only option to me. Imagine picking one of those up down the off licence. You’d probably need a wheelbarrow to get it home.
Yeah, I had one. A Bells one. The label was upside down though. Right way up when in an optic of course.