No one had opened this historic box since 1918...
The box, known as the "tub" (or olla), was made around 1825 and was used to distribute Winchester College's leftover food to the poor until 1918.
It had been sat at the side of the 14th-century dining hall at the college since I joined in 2019. No one I spoke to had ever seen it opened, and there were no photographs of the inside.
Searching for the key in the Porters' Lodge, in the Archives and in the (surprisingly large) box of mystery keys yielded no results.
Without a key, we needed to resort to a screwdriver, unscrewing the metalwork that was holding the tub tightly shut.
What were we going to find? No one knew. Possibly some incredibly mouldy food from 1918; potentially a time capsule of old documents; probably nothing.
Sadly, there was no pot of gold. However, there was a metal lining...
It appears that the tub (which is too heavy to be carried as a whole) remained outside the college and that only the lining was carried back and forth with the scraps of food.
The chain at the back of it must have been used to fix the tub to the College's wall, in case someone tried to steal it.
There was a partition inside the tub to separate different foodstuffs.
By unscrewing the lock, it has been possible to make a new key for the tub, which sits as before in the College's 14th-century dining hall and can be seen on public tours of the College.
Thank you to everyone who helped to make this possible.
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