Guys, there is no doubt about the identity of my cases (I have quite a large collection of similar items) the question is how did they come to be in the garden.

Interesting. I’ll have to find out who used to live in the house and see if they had any connection with the docks although really the house is around fifteen miles from the nearest place any decent sized ships might have berthed. Would people have traveled that far to work?

Thanks, the house was built in in the 1930’s but we didn’t move in till the 70’s. I’ve no idea who lived there before us. If I remember rightly mum didn’t find them all together, they were dug up in a ten meter square patch right at the end of the garden which hadn’t been dug in many years.
Interestingly I took them to the curator at the Chester castle museum many years ago and he identified them as German!