Mrs Potts and garden archaeology

 A few years ago, when working in the garden, I turned up an old flat iron base

Heavily corroded and covered with clag, I put it to one side on a pile of bricks beside the shed and left it.

Yesterday, down at Lake View, I documented some Mrs Potts irons, which were a late nineteenth century innovation where you had a set of three flat irons with a detachable handle, the idea being that you left the bases on the kitchen range to heat up, fitted the handle to one, did your ironing and swapped the bases in turn as they grew cold, and reheated the irons until you were done.

Mrs Potts irons were quite common and turn up all over rural Australia, so it's no surprise that there's an example at Lake View

One of the bases looks like this (the picture's failed QA and will have to be rephotographed), but it has this quite sharp profile, three holes and "Mrs Potts Iron" embossed on it.

Now the flat iron I dug up a few years ago has a similar profile so I went out into the yard and had a second look

The last few years of being out in the rain and frost have freed some of the dirt and clag and quite clearly the profile is similar to a Mrs Potts base and importantly has three protrusions where the handle attachment fits on a Potts iron, and while you can't see this I could kid myself I can make out 'TS' in the correct place on the iron amid the corrosion.

So, tentatively, I'd say it was a Mrs Potts iron base...