A couple who discovered a time capsule from forty-years-ago while renovating their holiday let have managed to track down the family of the man who buried it.
Charlotte and Phil Betts, from Oulton Broad, Suffolk, were ‘excited’ when builders doing work on the old stables next to their home found the glass jar hidden in a wall.
The Nescafe glass jar had duct tape wrapped around the lid and inside was a copy of the local paper, coins, business cards and faded photos – all from 1983.
Charlotte, 47, posted the find on her local Facebook group and soon made contact with Jackie Aarons whose father had hidden the jar in the wall of the stables.
Jackie, 53, said she remembered helping her dad Les with the time capsule 40 years earlier and it was a ‘happy’ moment for her mum Celia Anne – as Les had passed in 2021.
One the old photographs which is now faded but the handwriting on the back is still clear.
It reads: “August 1982, renovation of old stables. Owner Leslie David Aarons shown here. Purchased ‘Woodlands’ April 1979. Wife Celia Anne, children David, Jane and Jacqueline.”
Charlotte, a corporate social responsibility lead, and Phil, a technician support analyst, said they were very excited to find the capsule on November 6.
The couple, who moved into their home last year, said: “We’re currently renovating our holiday let that’s on our plot and the builders found the time capsule.
“They nearly chucked it in a skip at first – it is an old fashioned Nescafé jar.
“We decided to open it and found newspapers from 1983, a few coins, business cards and old photographs wrapped in a polythene bag.
“They had become so degraded you couldn’t see the photograph at all but we could read the writing on the back.”
Charlotte posted on Facebook and soon people who knew the Aarons family messaged both her and Jackie – who helped her dad put it together when she was 11.
Charlotte added: “We exchanged numbers and we’ve spoken on the phone. It was her dad who converted the stables to the holiday let.
“It’s exciting that we found it. We’re going to keep the newspaper and some of the coins to put in a frame for a display in the holiday let – so everyone knows the story.”
Jackie, now living near Loddon in Norfolk, said she remembers helping her mum and dad, brother David and sister Jane, with selecting the items for the jar.
She said: “I have a lot of memories from that lovely house.
“Dad instigated it and put it together but we were all around him, involved in what we put in it.
“I personally haven’t thought about it since the day we put it in. We moved away in 1987 and I didn’t think it would be taken out in my life time.
“Dad didn’t have a particular time frame for how long he wanted it to be in there.
“He did up that building for the holiday let and I think he wanted to put a piece of his moment in there.
“He died in 2021 so he’ll never see it but that’s how it goes.
“It was really exciting when I did find out it had been uncovered. It was really lovely for my mum as she now has a connection to my dad in the past.
“It was a happy moment for all of us.”
Jackie added that she’d seen pictures of the holiday let which form part of the old stables and said it had not changed much from her dad’s own renovations.
She plans to meet Charlotte and Phil in Suffolk to see the time capsule and holiday let in person in the new year.
