Opening up a walled up cellar ?

[Edwardia]

Opened up dining room fireplace here, and found bones..not a skellington though, but bones in a takeaway box !

Does your dining room fireplace pre-date Kentucky Fried Chicken?

I should think so at 1903 but a mere babe of a house compared to some, wish I had the possibility of uncovering a priest's hole or skellington !

 

[Penners]

wish I had the possibility of uncovering a priest's hole or skellington !

So far as I know, priests' skeletons look pretty much like anyone else's. So how would you know? :wink:

 

[Maf]

Am I correct in thinking that a 'Priest's Hole' is totally different from a 'Priest Hole' and the two should not be confused :roll:

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Don't get too enthusiastic though.

Blimmin' busybodies. Lucky they weren't around when this was being dug:
http://www.williamsontunnels.com/faq.htm

 

[Edwardia]

My first job at 17, was on a stud farm just outside Newmarket. On Chieveley Park Stud there is a tunnel entrance which supposedly runs all the way to The White Hart Hotel in the heart of Newmarket's town centre and was supposedly used by Nell Gwyn.

 

[fjpdesigns]

A large part of Nottingham is built over a vast network of tunnels, excavated, if my memory serves me well, in the Middle Ages. At that time they were occupied like a subterranean city with all manner of trades being plied. It was always my dream to own a house with a cellar with access to this network - it would have given limitless workshop space! Many houses were reputed to have such access. I never did though. I wonder what the legal position would have been.
I do remember that when I was at college there they were building the Victoria Shopping Centre[ late 60s early 70s ] A chap I shared a house with, who was labouring on the site, came back one day and said they had been pouring concrete all day for the foundations and were puzzled why the level never went up. Then the penny dropped.....................
I believe you can go on organised tours of part of the tunnel system. They also link up with the castle.

 

[fjpdesigns]

Just googled them - here's one site.

http://www.nottinghamhistory.co.uk/local/caves.htm

 

[DaveBrigg]

The Nottingham tour sets off from the castle and winds around underground, although parts are bricked up. We went there in 2006. Near the base of the castle is a great pub, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which is carved into the rock. One of the chimneys is a 60 ft tunnel up to the castle above.

 

[Penners]

For anyone interested in tunnels, this is an interesting website:

http://underground-history.co.uk/front.php

 

[DaveBrigg]

This was what happened when some 'forgotten' tunnels across the road from us collapsed in Reading in January 2000. Moments earlier a fire engine had been parked where the hole is, as its occupants looked into a drain which had started to sink. The only way to trace the extent of the tunnels was to hammer in large metal rods every couple of metres, and record how far they dropped each time they were hit - sometimes over a metre at a time. Obviously this was tricky when the tunnels were recorded as heading under houses, and even worse for the owners when they were picked up again in the back garden.
The extent became so large that the tunnels had to be filled in stages, and the job was still going on a couple of years after we moved away. A total of 1266 boreholes were drilled and 350m3 of bulkfill grout and over 1000m3 of compaction grout injected.