“Thankfully the project manager was on site and recognised the significance of the object,” she said.
“But we have discovered that it is actually urine, not alcohol.
“So it’s a good job the manager stepped in to stop them.”
Ms Yeates told the she had used a combination of techniques to decipher the bottle’s age and contents.
She said the shape of the bottle was introduced in 1790 and its unevenness suggested it was hand-blown, adding that as moulds to make bottles were only introduced in 1840 it must have been made before that date.
A multi-spectral imager, which throws different wavelengths of light on the object, revealed the contents were bodily fluids, the main one being urine.
