A TIME capsule, buried for 122 years was unearthed in a schoolroom behind Dawlish Methodist Church last Thursday by builders demolishing the old structure for modernisation.
Inside the glass bottle, roughly 30cm high and 7cm wide, there were five items. Three newspapers, a timetable for church services in Dawlish in 1881, and an old 1p coin.
The newspapers are The Methodist Recorder 1879, The Dawlish Times 1881 and the Western Morning News 1881.
There are no records of the capsule being buried and Church Steward Mr Fey believes the stonemason who originally worked on the building buried it.
When the builders found it they opened it and took the contents out to have a look. Finding it was quite damp and fragile, they laid it out to dry on a table and called Mr Fey.
'I was very excited when I heard the news and to tell you the truth, I was hoping to have found a bit more inside it!' he said.
'It was found by a concrete block with the date that the foundation was built carved into the stone.
'What surprises me is reading through them and finding load of names that I recognise and businesses that are still going now.' He said.
'In the papers it talks of public baths in Marine Parade, a sausage making factory, coal merchants, Tappers in Piermont Place and grocers.
'There is so much in there. It is fascinating to look through them and try to imagine what it was like and picture where everything was back then.'
All the documents will be sent up to Exeter to be stored in archives.