Wooden board discovered under wallpaper

[clarrabel]

Hi all,

This is my first post on the forum. We bought a ground-floor flat in a 1890s semi-detached house on the Wirral in May last year. We are (slowly) trying to do it up and so far have tackled the kitchen, bathroom and have had the sash windows restored.

This week I started to strip the wallpaper from what is now the dining room. It is a room towards the back of the house which I presume was once the main kitchen (although I admit that this is a bit of a guess!) Very high up on one wall I have found what at first I thought to be a wooden beam. When it was all revealed it turned out that it didnt stretch across the whole room. There is also no wall above it in the flat upstairs so it doesnt support anything. On closer inspection it also has a curved or decorative edge on the top and bottom and has round marks on where something or things ahve been attached to it once upon a time.

A builder who is working on the flat upstairs suggested that it might have been put there to attach bells or hooks onto when the room was a kitchen. Is this possible or likely? To my eye the circular marks are too close together to be bells and are not even or straight.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Photos would be helpful.

And welcome to the forum.

 

[MdB]

Photos?







(Asking for photos off new posters is a pet hobby here. We do so love them!)

 

[FamilyWiggs]

(Asking for photos off new posters is a pet hobby here. We do so love them!)

And in this case might be somewhat helpful in helping clarrabel! :wink:

 

[clarrabel]

Okay, here are some photos:

1. The wooden 'beam'.

2. The marks on the beam.

3. Some other bits on the wall which have been (badly) filled. I thought these might have been from the old staircase (which would have been in the hallway on the other side of the wall), but the builder thought they might have been old shelves. If so, they would have been very hefty shelves.

4. Other photos of the room.

Hope this helps (and the images work - I'm not great at these forum-thingys!).

Thanks again.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Hmm... quite hard to see. Given the height in the room and suggestiion it was the old kitchen/scullery, it seems plausable they were for the old bells - but like you I'd have though those were in a straight line.

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Hi, clarrabel,

Welcome to the forum.

Interesting pics. Those circular mountings on the board are certainly suggestive of bell mounts. Typically these would be about 2" diameter, with 2 or 3 small screw fixings around the periphery. If you look very closely you may see where the rim of the mounting has pressed into the wood, especially near the fixings.
The staggered arrangement could have been to allow the bell wires to run horizontally to the array of bells with suitable spacing between them.

The plastered infills running horizontally could relate to the removal of gas lighting pipework, a conduit for bell wires, or perhaps an early electrical installation. Or something completey different. Good fun, this detective work.

 

[CliffordPope]

Not the bell mounts themselves, but for the pulleys to take the wires on their way to the bell mounts?
These would need to be slightly staggered so that the wires came out parallel with a sufficient gap between.

 

[JoceAndChris]

What a fascinating find!

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Not the bell mounts themselves, but for the pulleys to take the wires on their way to the bell mounts?
These would need to be slightly staggered so that the wires came out parallel with a sufficient gap between.

Yep - that sounds about right.

You might find something here: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=picture+servants+bells&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=VKT&rls=org.mozilla:en-GBfficial&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=vJ99T_HBHIjS8QPZ1o22DQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CEQQ_AUoAQ&biw=1436&bih=690

 

[clarrabel]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I like the idea of them being the markings from the pulleys instead of the bells. This would explain why they aren't all next to each other in a line. I'm going to try to soak and scrape the rest of the paper off later on today. Hopefully there will be more markings further along which might shed more light on the matter.

Great fun discovering all the hidden quirks of the building. So far we've discovered an old stretcher from the First World War in the basement and an old military trunk (empty unfortunately!) in a cupboard. I'm waiting to find buried treasure when we sort out the floors!