Household rubbish from the 70s including a bottle of salad cream with its contents still intact have been unearthed at one of Angus’s most popular country parks.
It was uncovered at Forfar Loch, where Scottish Water engineers are involved in a sewer main repair project after years of problems there.
Locals have been shocked to see evidence of the site’s former role as a town dump re-surfacing.
Businessman Alan Hampton said the household brands of 50 years ago were easy to spot.
The sewer site is fenced off off to country park visitors.
It’s close to where Lochside leisure centre stood before being bulldozed in 2022.
Household names
But Alan, who owns the popular 10 Cafe Bar in Forfar town centre, said the secrets of the past were clear to see.
And pages from a Sunday Post of February 1973 provided an exact date marker of when Forfar’s rubbish was being dumped beside the loch.
Alan added: “I easily spotted a Sqezy washing up liquid bottle and a Heinz Salad Cream glass bottle with stuff still in it.
“There’s lots of common household names there like Ski Yoghurt and Domestos.
“It’s amazing this was dumped with planning approved and construction starting on the leisure centre the following year.
“The strata of the rubbish is only about eight inches below the surface,” said Alan.
The scale of what’s inches below the surface of the country park has created a stir on social media.
One local said: “It’s really quite scary that after 50 years most of the stuff looks like it could have been put there yesterday.”
Sewer project
The country park sewer project began last month.
Around 600 metres of the sewer main has been fenced off. It runs from Queenswell Road and skirts the south east corner of Forfar Loch.
Scottish Water and Caledonia Water Alliance (CWA) are carrying out the work.
A Scottish Water spokesperson said their had been good progress on the project.
“In the early stages of work on site, a decision was taken to install a second pipe underground rather than over land.
“This will have the same role in enabling investigation of the pre-existing sewer, but will also provide additional capacity on a long-term basis with minimal additional disruption.”
‘News worth waiting for’
They added: “We are approaching a key stage in the work next week when a section of the footpath around the loch, at the narrowest point between the loch and the caravan site, will need to be closed for approximately ten days to allow work to continue safely.
“Signage will be displayed to make users of the country park aware; and we will do all we can to keep the period of closure to a minimum.
“The historic use of the site means that there have been a few interesting finds from as much as 50 years ago.
“The Sunday Post has always offered news worth waiting for, but a copy of one 1973 edition had waited a lot longer than would have been expected.”
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