What is this brick feature?

[malcolm]

I've been removing cement from the bottom couple of feet of my walls with a plan to lime plaster. I've found a really weird feature under the stairs.

For background the house used to be a pub and the bar was once in this room. The alcove is under the stairs and I believe the stairs were re-located here in 1920.

I can't explain the brickwork details. These are the only special bricks I've found in the house. There are corner bricks each side of the arch and the raised platform has bull noise bricks with ordinary bricks behind. Can anyone think of a purpose for this feature?

 

[Zebra]

Ooh how exciting malcolm, when I've been to your house I've been itching to see what's under there, I shall watch this with interest. So not a secret entrance to a cellar, just brickwork with a rounded corner on the front, and chamfered on the side. It looks like...a step? Which perhaps isn't very exciting..... How old do you reckon those bricks are? Cement mortar or lime?

 

[Cubist]

Well, you've got me scratching my noodle and not just with the bricks. What is that projection in the upper right corner of the picture? Looks to me like some old iron-work and noting that the stairs were re-located above this feature a century ago, I'm wondering what its function may have been. Or, are my eyes deceiving me and getting my marbles rolling in completely the wrong direction?

 

[malcolm]

I admit I was cellar hunting. It looks like the bull nose infill was built after the chamfered bits. It's all lime mortar. It's just normal floor level on the other side so it's odd this part is raised. I plan to remove the top surface of the concrete floor to get down to 1920 level and might find some more clues.

The bit to the top right is plasterboard added under the stairs. I imagine the original finish was a little more discreet.

I'll clean things up a bit and try to find out more.

 

[LadyArowana]

The bit to the top right is plasterboard added under the stairs. I imagine the original finish was a little more discreet.

I'll clean things up a bit and try to find out more.

Could the plasterboard have covered up some sort of trap door which was originally there? I’m thinking of something they might have used for deliveries of “pub stuff” ( technical term ) and the bull nose bricks there to help roll things over onto the floor?

 

[mardinor]

Naughty step?

 

[Feltwell]

I admit I was cellar hunting.

Do you have no obvious cellar at the moment then?

Where were they keeping the beer before? I know many pubs now have a cold store out the back, but usually the old cellar is still there.

 

[noj]

Top of a sort of now redundant dumb waiter to the vast cellar below?

 

[Cubist]

Ooh, ooh, specialist beer keg stillage.

 

[stuart45]

To use expensive bullnose and cant bricks does seem like it's been made for rolling the barrels through.

 

[malcolm]

I've cleaned it up a little further. A beer barrel stallage does sound like a possibility. It must be built on earth as the walls are damp above it. The plinth has mortar gaps to the wall so was presumably built after the wall, perhaps when the bar was moved into this room.



The stairwell is confusing me. It must be 1830 or 1850 ish as it has an early 1800s sash window with very thin glazing bars. I have an old photo with a 1.5 storey catslide roof that might be in this area. The chamfers must represent an entrance but are undamaged so must have been plastered. But there are a few coats of limewash on them.

The ground water levels are high here. There is a pub next door that has a half depth cellar - half underground and half above ground. I've found relieving arches in the kitchen foundations that are on the other side of this wall, but the kitchen was built at the same time as the staircase. But the house has been a pub at least since 1647 and these are extensions.

 

[stuart45]

Pubs are usually interesting buildings with a lot of history. I used to work for a firm in Brighton that had the construction contracts with Phoenix breweries, so got to work on quite a few of them.
One of the issues for the.pubs nowadays was getting the deliveries into the cellar. There's one in Portslade called the Battle of Trafalgar that had to have a tunnel built from the cellar to a new trap hatch in the car park, as the old one in the street was too much of a problem with traffic congestion.

 

[malcolm]

It's interesting figuring out the build phases. This place started off with a timber frame building and they added a lean-to on the back. Then they built the lean-to up to full height and now lacking a lean-to they built another one. Then they built that to full height as well. Always the foundations of the existing single storey extensions were built upon which is probably why building regs are now so fussy about foundations for single storey extensions.

I've been attempting to clean the plinth with the idea of maintaining an interesting feature. The bullnose turn out to be blues. They applied bitumen before the concrete and there is limewash and other paint on there. I think it would need blasting so I'm thinking about putting pamments on top and re-plastering with lime. Somebody else can make an exciting discovery in the future.