By Izzy Hawksworth
A group of construction workers has been left stunned after they found a message in a bottle from a team of builders who worked on the same site more than 50 years ago.
Anthony Gibbons, 39, discovered the hidden message alongside his colleagues on Tuesday (January 28) while they were turning a swimming baths into 49 luxury apartments.
The document lists the names of the men who worked on building the baths, which are in Hexham, Northumberland, in 1973 along with their trades and what area they were from.
Anthony, a construction site manager, said the whole team feels “excited and proud” to have discovered the message in the bottle.
He said: “Everybody was quite thrilled and excited to have a read of what was inside the time capsule.
“It’s not very often that you find time capsule in old buildings.
“As construction workers, we don’t get the chance to work in buildings at these age and these jobs don’t come in every day.
“Everybody is quite excited and proud to find the note.
“We’ve had a little look back in history and have reminisced at how things have changed.
“We are quite proud to be working on the same building that those guys worked on all these years ago.”
Anthony, of Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, and the other construction workers have now put the bottle back where it was found and have also created a time capsule themselves.
He said: “After we found it, I wrote a note stating the names of the guys who are site and said how we are converting the swimming baths into luxury apartments.
“I got pretty much everyone who was on site that day to sign the document and put what area they are from – just like there was on the original note.
“We more or less copied it, but with a 2025 version.”
Anthony posted about the discovery on a local Facebook page and has had over 1,000 messages from people saying their relatives might have been one of the men who wrote the original note.
He said: “We’ve had over 1,400 likes and comments and there is a lot of people claiming and asking if it could be their dad or uncle or friends.
“It seems like a lot of the men still have relations in and around the local area.”
