The things we do----

[Jocelyn]

Chose a good day to have the aga installed didn't I,, temperatures of over 30 in the Holy Land.!!!!!

Have not been able to get pikkies on yet, will have to grovel to the other half and get him to do it.

Have spent the last few weeks peeping under carpets, lino and floor tiles to see what we've got and read the survey from 1990 when the dreaded tanking was recommended and carried out, so now I know that has sucessfully covered up a large portion of lathe and plaster walls and accounts for why we have very odd floor levels. I also have the old deeds now and a quick read reveals that it was four cottages in 1901 and I can now begin to see where the original 1340 bit is concealed. I keep gazing around at the beams and finding the outlines.

The dry weather seems to be causing some 'joins' in the walls to shrink away, so I can see where some doorways have been re arranged. So as our surveyor said 'there's still a few hidden secrets to be found'


Jocelyn

 

[NT]

Talking of hidden secrets, one of the joys of period buildings is many times the chance of finding a dead body. The potential burial site has been available for 100 or more years, and policing was far behind what it is today, making murder much easier to get away with in the past.

Who knows what you may find.


NT

 

[Moo]

But first check that none of your predecessors were medics.
We knew some people who found a complete skeleton in one of their cellars. It was only when someone found a torch and they saw the wires that they put two and two together.

 

[Jocelyn]

Funny you should mention bodies, I was going to post about the exciting find in the garden. We dug down deep to plant some box and found two rusty, nasty looking ' instruments of torture' like scissors with spiral springy things on the end. Carefully brushing them off and puzzling for a while we looked up and spotted the old wooden telephone pole.... we realised that our find was the old spring bits that they used to attach the wires to the pole. But then---------- we dug up a very large bone which looked suspiciously like a human bone. It is back in the ground..

Jocelyn

 

[Moo]

"which looked suspiciously like a human bone. It is back in the ground.. "

I call that chickening out.

 

[thiambal]

Unlikely to be a chicken bone I think :wink:

Is it former agricultural land? - could it be a cow bone?

 

[skier-hughes]

Ours is an old farmhouse and we've been told where to expect bones if we start digging, though the farmer was suprised when we pulled out a jawbone of some sort from close by the house, he said it wasn't from anything he'd buried..........................

 

[Penners]

Jocelyn - each time you post, you increase my need to see pictures! As I'm not going to be able to make the pilgrimage to see the house, I'm desperate!

As regards the Aga, better now than when the temperature has plummeted to a healthy East Anglian freeze-up!

 

[Moo]

Please explain why you won't be able to make the pilgrimage, Penners.
Should we infer that you're planning to emigrate to your chateau?

 

[Penners]

I fear so, Moo. The servants just can't be trusted with the vintage wines unless Mrs P and I make regular surprise visits.

 

[NT]

But first check that none of your predecessors were medics.
We knew some people who found a complete skeleton in one of their cellars. It was only when someone found a torch and they saw the wires that they put two and two together.

now thats what I call a bad day


NT

 

[Paul Hopper]

Jocelyn

There is something at the bottom of our garden as well, but in all these years I have never dared dig it up!

It is staying there!

Paul

 

[Jocelyn]

Good idea Paul.

However I am getting concerned that our border collie keeps digging in one corner...............................

 

[Sue Wilkinson]

I've dug up lots of quite big bones over the years, including various bits of jaw in the veg patch. But when we were successful in buying the patch of wilderness that has now doubled the size of our garden we had to hack our way through the brambles, some of which were 35 feet long and as tall as me. Eventually we got to the bottom edge of the land and found, under a bush, a hind leg bone of a deer, complete with working knee and hoof. Then later on I found various other big bones in the same area. I think something quite big used to take its spoils back to that bush to eat.

We also found a monkey in the brambles. Small and brown, sporting a yellow tee shirt with the ledgend 'Twycross Zoo' on it! I guess some local cat pinched that and left it for us. The monkey now lives in the apple tree. He's more or less green now, but he gets a warm soapy wash once a year.

Sue

 

[Penners]

What do you feed the monkey on? And hasn't Twycross Zoo missed it?

Actually, if it's stayed in your apple tree all that time, slowly going green, then I fear I may have some bad news for you...

...it's dead.

 

[Lynn]

What do you feed the monkey on? And hasn't Twycross Zoo missed it?

Actually, if it's stayed in your apple tree all that time, slowly going green, then I fear I may have some bad news for you...

...it's dead.

Could have happened in Madison WI. Story went that in the 1960s there was a monkey exhibit at the zoo there...from Wikipedia (that has everything, I just read a story in the latest New Yorker magazine that they have topped a million entries...) that notes:

"Monkey Island", the name that is traditionally assigned to relatively small islands in the inland water lakes of Wisconsin. The origin of the name relates back to the cement island that monkeys inhabitated in the Vilas Park Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin. The island was surrounded by a water that featured seals. The small island visible as state highway 51 crosses the Manitowish chain of lakes (across from Greer's pier) is the original monkey island, so-named in the 1960s during trips to the old gangster hideout, Little Bohemia, of John Dillinger shoot-out fame

Anyway the monkey population (36) on exhibit escaped one day and they failed to recovered 22 of them, and that was the end of the monkey island at Vilas Zoo. So when doing restoration projects in the vicinity of that zoo, I'd say watch out for monkey bones.