United Dairies Bottle, 1950s

I pulled this gorgeous United Dairies bottle from the mud in the same “horrible mudlarking” jaunt as my 1960 Coca-Cola bottle.

It is not my first intact bottle find – I did previously find an intact bottle at Charlton, but it was a modern miniature spirit and not especially exciting, whereas this feels like an actual find, even if not remotely reportable.

United Dairies was formed in 1915 by a wartime merger of three dairies who pooled their resources to keep afloat and in 1917 several London retailers joined them. Headquartered in Trowbridge, the company continued its expansion after the war and helped pioneer the sale of pasteurised milk in the late 1920s. Many of their creameries were served by the railways, including their works at Vauxhall which received milk via a pipe at the station! Here it is seen on a map in 1950, so around the time of our bottle:

Pictures of the trains in action at Vauxhall can be found here and here. In 1959 the company merged with rival Cow & Gate, creating Unigate, who sold off the dairy part of their business to Dairy Crest in 2000.