28/07/2026
There are days on the beach when one tiny discovery opens a door into history.
This sea glass bottle top caught my eye because of one word embossed into the glass: Garton.
To most people it would simply be an old piece of glass. To a sea glass collector, it’s the beginning of a story.
Frederick Gibson Garton was a Nottingham grocer who developed what would become the famous HP Sauce. He registered the H.P. name in the 1890s before selling the recipe and trademark, and his name continued to appear on early bottles.
What fascinates me even more is the journey. I grew up in the Midlands, where Garton’s story began, yet I found this fragment washed up on a beach in Northumberland. Somewhere between a Nottingham factory, a household table, the sea and decades of tides, this tiny piece of history found its way to me.
The stopper itself can generally be dated to the late 1890s to the early 1900s simply by the embossed Garton name. Without the original bottle it would be difficult to be more precise, which is what makes this story so special.
After researching its history, I recently acquired an original Garton bottle with its stopper still intact. Seeing the complete bottle alongside the sea-worn stopper I found on the beach feels like bringing two chapters of the same story back together after more than a century.
This is exactly why I love sea glass hunting. Every piece has a story waiting to be discovered. Sometimes all it takes is a single name embossed in glass to begin a journey through history.
