Museum Quiz: One

It’s time for something a bit different we reckon. How about a quiz? All of the objects shown in this posting can be found (along with thousands of others) in the Fylde Country Life Museum (there’s a link on this board if you’re interested).
The rules of our quiz are simple…just study the illustrations for a few moments, see if you can work out what the objects were originally used for and then check your answers with those below.
Obviously there are no prizes for doing this, but it might make a change from those mind-numbingly dull weekday repeats of ‘Murder She Wrote’ and ‘Quincy’:

Okay, let’s see how you did.

1. The earliest and simplest form of mole trap, known as the ‘Barrel’. Not only were moles a nuisance but their skins could be used in the manufacture of ‘Mole Skin’ coats.
2. A Neolithic flint axe discovered at Bradshaw Lane, Pilling. Originally this simple but effective tool would have been used by our ancient ancestors to chop down trees, skin animals and so forth.
3. A Warreners' spade was a particularly nasty object…especially if you happened to be a rabbit. Rabbits were introduced into Britain by the Normans (actually there's some dispute about this and archaeologists nowadays are leaning towards the Romans...but that's another story) and farmed for their meat and pelts. The spade itself was used to dig into the burrows thus flushing the rabbits into a carefully pegged out ‘purse net’. Those rabbits unwilling to flea into were treated instead to the vicious hook on the other end of the spade, which was inserted into the burrow mouth and, consequently, the rabbit as well.
4. Dolly sticks came in several varieties but were all, essentially, used in conjunction with Dolly tubs. They were operated, as you’d expect, by hand, thrashing the water in the weekly wash was stewing into a frenzy in order to release as much of the ground in grime as was humanly possible.
5. This device, known as a ‘Peat Drill’, was designed for gardeners so that they create their own seed plugs. The one in the illustration was made in the 1920s from aluminium. In order to use it, peat would be placed in the hexagonal tube at the bottom, then the upper section would then be lowered, forcing the soil into compact, pot-shaped plugs suitable for seeds.

(So what do you think? Want another short quiz at some point? Or should we consign this idea to the dustbin? Let us know by clicking on the comments box below. Go on...we won't bite you...well, not unless we're really hungry.)