finds under floorboards in period homes

[Keithj]

Nothing of interest in this house (surprisingly) but an enormous cache of very old bottles buried in the garden of the Norfolk place. I think a former owner from long ago was using bottles to reinforce a bank at one side.

 

[philpjuk100]

As the house has been here for over four hundred years,occupied by many families and also an industrial area (smithy and wheelwrights) the house and garden are full of finds.Cracks in beams have coins/rings/seals etc pushed into them as have gaps around doors and windows, also "witch marks" on bressumers,we dug a test pit in the garden and found musket and cannon balls from the civil war and on removing the green house found the "midden",digging down through modern then victorian pot we thought we were digging back in time until at the bottom we found a digital watch! The scotts army were stationed in the village during the ecw seiges so they left a lot of evidence,scottish saints medal,ball moulds,lead from meting pots etc.The home guard were here 39/45 with a "pill box" on the riverbank leaving uniform buttons,bayonets etc.Have lots of pics but cannot download them as it tells me the board limit has been reached,phil.

 

[Ebenezer]

As the house has been here for over four hundred years,occupied by many families and also an industrial area (smithy and wheelwrights) the house and garden are full of finds.Cracks in beams have coins/rings/seals etc pushed into them as have gaps around doors and windows, also "witch marks" on bressumers,we dug a test pit in the garden and found musket and cannon balls from the civil war and on removing the green house found the "midden",digging down through modern then victorian pot we thought we were digging back in time until at the bottom we found a digital watch! The scotts army were stationed in the village during the ecw seiges so they left a lot of evidence,scottish saints medal,ball moulds,lead from meting pots etc.The home guard were here 39/45 with a "pill box" on the riverbank leaving uniform buttons,bayonets etc.Have lots of pics but cannot download them as it tells me the board limit has been reached,phil.

Wow id love to see some pics of the witch marks and items in beams? Maybe upload them and add the links?

 

[Penners]

We've not yet discovered the hidden Saxon hoard

We 'ave one of zose - eet's very nice! (with apologies to Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

The first cottage (built in 1410) that we renovated yielded a fascinating selection of items under the ground floor and between the first floor floorboards and the downstairs ceiling. We had the usual broad selection of broken clay pipes, oyster shells, bottles, pottery shards and so on. We also found a patten*, a piece of truck**, a George IV penny, a medieval bronze candleholder, a very old carved oak rose, a small sickle and a number of other treasures.

* A device for raising a woman's shoes above the mud in the street.

** Coinage issued by a factory owner and used to pay his employees. The only shop that would honour the currency was the factory owner's own shop! The system was outlawed by the Truck Act of 1887.

 

[billybuntus]

Just replace my front door on an <1850's house and found a very very rusty large iron key under the step

 

[MatthewC]

Mummified cat skeleton buried in the mud and rubble wall of the cottage.
I understand they did that to bring good luck, or ward off evil spirits, so obviously I put it back.

In a previous house, dozens of garden gnomes under the floorboards, many of them headless.

A cat might bring you luck but the headless gnomes sound distinctly unlucky - possibly even a bit spooky! Although of course it might just have been a former owner who hated garden gnomes.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I think the bottle in the original post is from around 1910.

As for finds - no - the previous owner found a lot though: including 1890s newspaper plugging windows (of which there's still a lot under the drawing room floor), a tradesman's grievance from 1910 inscribed on the old door, and best of all, what may be a medieval stone coffin he dragged up from the field we bought below the house - ironic he stole in advance what would have come to BC anyway. It's nice he's left them all here.

The floorboards haven't been comprehensively lifted so I suspect there's more interesting stuff under there.

 

[Penners]

what may be a medieval stone coffin

With apologies for a distinctly prosaic question, are you sure it isn't a cattle trough? They were often hewn from stone to prevent the beasts from knocking them over, and I've seen several around the size of a coffin. Does it have a lid? If so, I'm almost certainly wrong.

 

[Feltwell]

Just replace my front door on an <1850's house and found a very very rusty large iron key under the step

Under the flowerpot or mat would have been more convenient you would have thought..........

 

[Feltwell]

Does it have a lid? If so, I'm almost certainly wrong.

Or they have very tidy, well trained cows in Lincolnshire.

 

[Penners]

:lol: Oh, I'm sure that's true!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Well, I always thought it was a cattle trough, but then our esteemed Mr Hughes said he thought it could well be a coffin. It's rather odd really - why bother to drag a cattle trough into a field where there's a dew pond? But then why bury someone a long way from the church?
There's no lid anyway, so perhaps it is just a cattle trough.

 

[Penners]

I'm much closer to empirical knowledge of the difference between a trough and coffin than GH is, so I claim seniority! :wink:

 

[xanthe]

Any pics of the 'coffin'? Do you intend to make proper use of it in years to come? :shock:

Intrigued to know whether when people sell their house it's usual to leave any historic finds with it?

Have people here left them - or have they been left them?

My personal take would be to leave them - on condition that the new owners were interested and likely to look after them and pass them on. I would hate to think that things that are 'precious' to me (and the building) like little leather shoes or old sulphur matches would just get chucked in the bin the day they moved in. But then how do you pass them on to future owners who would be interested?

 

[Feltwell]

One of the biggest "crimes" to me in terms of passing items on that belong to a house is the deeds. Since the Land registry went fully computerised, the physical deeds have no legal relevance to ownership any more so lots of solicitors and mortgage companies have been throwing them away

I was fortunate here in that although the original deeds have long gone, I do have a typed transcript of them that for some reason was taken in 1940 when the house was sold to the brewery that stood behind it. When I bought the house the solicitor passed them on purely for interest's sake - but I bet a lot of solicitors would have just binned them. Criminal to think how much history will be lost this way. I've nothing else that tells me the history of this house, save for a photo taken in about 1980 and that it appears on some old maps.

I'd like to research it's history but don't really know where to start, beyond asking at the local library. Anyone who's got any hints or tips on how to find out who constructed the house, any original plans likely to be lodged anywhere etc I'd love to hear them. Given that it predates needing planning permission, back in Victorian times surely some kind of official hoop must have had to be jumped through before you were allowed to build a house? What I know of the systems in India, which seem to have changed very little since colonial Victorian times, is that everything needs a piece of paper!

 

[plasticpigeon]

I totally agree about deeds. My mum has them for her house and knows who the original tennant was and what he did (a travelling salesman). I have everything from an underlease from 1920 onwards which is a very beautiful document, but would love to have the original deeds. One of my neighbours says she has some underlease or rental agreement from when her house was built, where the landlord stipulated what colour and how often everything in the house had to be painted. I would love to see that!!!!! These are very important historical records.

 

[TheRoost]

One of the biggest "crimes" to me in terms of passing items on that belong to a house is the deeds. Since the Land registry went fully computerised, the physical deeds have no legal relevance to ownership any more so lots of solicitors and mortgage companies have been throwing them away

I was fortunate here in that although the original deeds have long gone, I do have a typed transcript of them that for some reason was taken in 1940 when the house was sold to the brewery that stood behind it. When I bought the house the solicitor passed them on purely for interest's sake - but I bet a lot of solicitors would have just binned them. Criminal to think how much history will be lost this way. I've nothing else that tells me the history of this house, save for a photo taken in about 1980 and that it appears on some old maps.

I've been trying to get hold of the deeds for our house. Our solicitor originally charged us £10 for 'secure deeds postage' which we opted for, the other option was 'Secure storage' with them for £££, as 'the banks no longer hold them'. Since completing on the house we received nothing, I enquired and the solicitor sent me a print off of electronic copy (which I already had from the LR website, and is quite basic/incomplete!) I'm starting to think I've been ripped off, that they have no control if they can obtain the deeds or not (if the previous lender still had them that is) but they will just charge the fee anyway. I'd hate to think that someone had just chucked them in the bin

I'd like to research it's history but don't really know where to start, beyond asking at the local library. Anyone who's got any hints or tips on how to find out who constructed the house, any original plans likely to be lodged anywhere etc I'd love to hear them. Given that it predates needing planning permission, back in Victorian times surely some kind of official hoop must have had to be jumped through before you were allowed to build a house? What I know of the systems in India, which seem to have changed very little since colonial Victorian times, is that everything needs a piece of paper!

Try your local council, they might have some archives in town planning/history. Our local council has been through various transitions over the last few decades, during one of these transitions our local historian obtained a bootload of historic documents relating to old buildings in the area, basically they told him 'come and get them or they are going in the skip' ! Hopefully your local council took more interest in such documents and have preserved them.

A few people in our area have tried to find out who built the houses in Victorian times, but with only a little success. Apparently it was common for the builder to be named on the deeds in the 1930's, but before then they tended to just name the land owner. I too would love to get hold the original house plans!

 

[LadyArowana]

Yes it's such a shame about the deeds. We know that the people we bought our house from had the originals ( they told us ) lovely things on parchment from 1767, which disappeared at the land registry at the time of our purchase. We asked our solicitor about it and he was frankly useless. I have heard that some special deeds do get retained for historical purposes in an archive even though the important record is now the digital one. Whether this is true or not I have no idea. We have a few other old leases and things that the vendors gave to us directly as they had no legal importance as part of the transaction.

 

[Penners]

We are immensely fortunate in having many of the historic Deed documents to our Georgian cottage. They are very beautiful, handwritten legal documents of various kinds, sealed with red wax.

Here's just one:

 

[AndieL]

Wow, Penners, that's a beautiful document! I've been a calligrapher for many years so seeing such a beautiful document is just wonderful.

I'd love to see a photo of the coffin/stone trough. I was married to a farmer for almost 30 years and we had a couple of hewn stone troughs on the farm. Beautiful they were too.

I lived in a couple of mid 18th century cottages with my ex husband and my favourite thing we found was an old basic hand-printed beef cattle auction notice from 1895, found in an old outbuilding on the farm. It was still on the original woodworm infested wooden boards it had been pasted to for advertising purposes. I spent weeks carefully restoring it, had it framed (it was rather large!) and it had a prominent place on our hallway wall for many years.

My partner found several crude rush light holders in the barn he renovated in norther France. He found many other beautiful things too, but unfortunately his french local builders don't hold such relics as being of value so they either burned them or binned them whilst he was away for a few weeks...grrrr!