Message in a bottle from 1891 found while renovating Leeuwarden station

Construction workers made a remarkable discovery while renovating the platform roofs at Leeuwarden station. They found a message in a bottle dating from 1891 hidden in one of the beams holding up the station’s roof, ProRail reported.

The bottle was tightly wrapped with paler and neatly tied with string, said Ernie Baars, director of Staalcon, performing the renovations. “After carefully removing the paper, I saw a bottle with a cork still in it. You could see through the glass that there was something inside the bottle.

The bottle contained four notes with the names of three postal workers and a conductor. “The bottle was made in the period 1825 to 1900. One of the notes bears the name of Arnoldus ten Hulscher, who worked as a government letter carrier in Leeuwarden. This note also has a date: 25 November 1891. Anroldus’s signature on the note is the same as his signature on his marriage certificate dated 18 May 1881. So there is no doubt that this is indeed a message in a bottle from 1891,” said ProRail archaeologist Jerry Huisman.

“Four men put their names on paper with a date. Then they deliberately put it in a bottle, sealed it, and bricked it in,” Huisman said. “This is where the space of fantasy comes in. What was the reason this bottle was left there? Why these four men? It’s a kind of historical Cluedo.”

“I think it’s nice that more than 130 years later, we think back to Arnoldus ten Hulscher, Lieuwe Brameijer, Rudolf Affolter, and J. Postema. Would that have been their intention?” the archeologist said.