Georgian Hot Tub Time Machine??! what is this...

[Kearn]

The rooms are looking fabulous @Kearn. False ceilings seem to attract electrics and plumbing. It's a real pain to figure out how to re-route them when you want much the same effect but want to delete the easy option. Same trouble here exposing a magnificent Edwardian ceiling.

Cheers Malcolm, it's been a while coming, but all the work across these rooms has turned out even better than I had envisioned which is the best way!

You're right, ceilings are a lazy trade's friend! It doesn't help that both mains electric and water come in via this room, so spaghetti junction is as bad as it could be up there! We will need to do some remedial lime plastering in the current roof space once the false ceiling is down, so rerouting around the perimeter is feasible.
Our bigger challenge is the redundant Victorian stack sat clumsily on the inglenook shoulder, which needs to come out when the ceiling does, and then we're talking scaffold, roof repairs including the principal rafter on the original gable which had been shortened to sit against the stack.... Hence we've paused for a while to enjoy living in a home rather than building site!

 

[Pennyviz]

Wow, that's really old @Penny. Where did you get the beams dated? I saved a couple of sections from a rotten gable and it would be interesting to know the date. I have a 100 year gap between no house on the maps and the first recorded tenant, and I can't figure out why they didn't build the chimney at the same time as they built the house as brick chimneys ought to have been the current technology.

Hi Malcolm
it was Oxford Dendrology. However local vernacular historian set it up as some of the carpenters marks on the joints were Arabic numerals which ties in with a research interest of theirs. They need a few good samples ideally and were very happy that one of mine had bark on it still. I was surprised they got anything other than dead insects so result!


penny

 

[george2019]

I know of two indoor wells in Victorian houses so I wouldn't dismiss it on those grounds.

But if you found the bottom then probably isn't a well.

 

[Kearn]

I know of two indoor wells in Victorian houses so I wouldn't dismiss it on those grounds.

But if you found the bottom then probably isn't a well.

Gosh, a blast from the past!!

It certainly wasn’t a well - this house would’ve had no need for it to be indoors and this was built 100+ years after the structure it sits in, abutting the rear of the inglenook, way too large and as you said, the bottom wasn’t too far down - whether it was an intentional floor or not...? It’s almost certainly foundations for something, sitting on flint under the brick. Oddly I was reading about a house recently which had a very large bread oven complex in a similar location and dimensions to this, piggy backing the main flue.

It’s still bugging me...!