If you live in an old house what's the most weird / interesting thing you've found?

[Comps83]

I live in a boring new build which I hate
Hoping to move to a Victorian terrace with period features soon
If you live in an older property what have you found when ripping out 70s plaster board or carpets , in the loft etc.?
I love anything like this

I live in a 16th century building. I have 2 floors, one floor is in the roof. The roof beams are held together with wooden pegs. In the frontroom I have 2 large cupboards, one of which has another cupboard in it. The ground floor is a shop and there was a basement which has been filled in. All around town are tunnels that go to the church, my flat is directly opposite, its possible that the cupboard within a cupboard was a hidey hole.
In the kitchen there is a random 'loft hatch' which is no use whatsoever because the space isn't big and its full of rubble.
It still has the original sash windows because its a grade 2 listed building.

My DH's grandmother had an imposing Victorian property, when stood in the garden they noticed there was a window in the attic that didn't match up to the floor plans.

It turned out someone had bricked up a room. When they knocked through there was nothing in there. Bizarre. And for some reason a little eerie. Why did a pervious owner brick up a room?

We live in a Victorian semi and our builder found a calling card behind the skirting board by the fire place in the dining room!

We found a door as well, a Victorian one with glass panels. It was just left in situ when part of the house was re-modelled and ended up as the side of what we thought was a very deep built-in cupboard that we wanted to turn into a bookcase.

I'd been merrily tapping the 'wall', quite hard, without realising there were glass panels in it. Luckily it didn't break. Our house is 400-odd years old but it's had bits built onto it, mostly quite shambolically, over the centuries since.

Our house is from 1814 and so far we have found two cat paw prints in the brickwork. A Napoleonic cat!

We've lived in 3 different Victorian houses since being married and haven't found glorious jewels or hidden art works.

House one: a three piece suite in the loft. No idea how it got there as it had to be dismantled to get it through the tiny loft hatch.

House 2: cigarette packets from the 1930s and tonnes of nicotine staining every surface.

House 3: a brewing set from the 80s which has left a dark stain on the ceiling of one of the bedrooms and a very strange and off putting biblical picture in a large wooden frame. Plus a fire surround in the shed. The loft is currently boarded with about 15 old doors from various eras. Hoping to find anything exciting underneath them when we sort it!

@HappyChristmasTreeRex

Not weird, but we found an old bread oven built into the old fireplace when we had our kitchen refitted. I found it fascinating to think if it being used years ago. Also, an old well pump, though the wooden handle is mainly gone.

Do we live in the same house? We also have an old bread oven and a charming and very deep well.

We don't own, but the house we live in is early-to-mid eighteenth century, and the outbuildings have an old Victorian forge chimney that was hidden behind a load of rubbish. Digging in the garden I have found lots of medieval pottery shards from what must have been an earlier house, and a few coins (mostly in very bad condition because the soil is wet, so I don't really know dates). And when I tried to dig a new veg bed, I hit into an old well. There was a communal well in the garden from the late Victorian period, replacing an older well, and since we know where the late Victorian well is, we assume we've found the older one.

Not so ancient, but very charming - there is wallpaper on the insides of the airing cupboard/store cupboard that I looked up, and it dates from around 1910. Very cute.

We have a concrete underground bunker (an air raid shelter!) in our garden - house is circa 1930s. Its a bit damp so can't really use it for anything and would be a massive job to remove it, so its just there!

Our house is only 1960's but in the garden we have found a piece of Roman roof tile and a cannon ball

We live in an 1883 terrace with a small garden. When we were having flagstones lifted and replaced with turf the gardener found a well! He thought it was a lump of concrete and sledgehammered it to break it up only to discover it was actually capping an old well.

When we bought it we were given a pack of all the old deeds and they were amazing. All the original velum plans, wills of past owners bequeathing the house, basically records of everyone who owned the house between 1883 and 1997. I've spent hours researching all of them!

We live in an old cottage and found 18th century rum bottles in the attic which I now display in the pantry

Other than that nothing of note which is a shame!

Pmk

I moved into an 1880s town house and found what my kids call 'the death stick'
It's like an old walking stick engraved with various carvings of pictures words dates and names. One is a guy called Marty who apparently died on my birthday about 100 years ago. If anything weird happens in the house or lose something it's always now Marty's fault 😂

House from 1905. Under a loose floorboard in an upstairs bathroom we found a card box for a sheepskin condom labelled “ Geronimo”. The box had instructions for washing your Geronimo condom but no actual condom.

House was built in 1920’s. There is a woman in her nineties whose parents were the original owners of the house two doors down. We found a rusted horseshoe when digging in our garden. She said that there had been a very big Victorian house at the end of our garden, the original stable building is still there but the house is now from the 1960’s. The row of houses we are in had been the garden, orchard and the stable of the very big house long gone.

Found in the 1970's by previous owners before us , in a remote property that had been abandoned at the turn of the century.

Hidden in a secret cubby hole up the chimney, he found a large cache of old letters, business papers and household bills for the property dating back to 1850, all in copperplate handwriting. When we bought the place, the previous owner wanted them to stay in their home. When we sold it 20 years later, we left them for the new owners ( but I made photocopies to keep).

@passthemustard That sounds like it might be a tally stick.

We live in a three floor, 17th century house once occupied by the village shoemaker. It is Grade B listed as are most of the other houses. Some are A listed too and one is an actual palace!

It is amazing to think the house has been constantly inhabited by people for so long.
I don’t believe in ghosts but would still have been a bit uneasy if I’d ever felt any odd sensations. We haven’t. The house has a good atmosphere so I like to think people were happy under its roof. Obviously people died here over the centuries which is a normal.

An enormous fireplace with a bread oven and a sort of hollow for warming things. I called the vendor to ask about it and he had lived here since 1963 but knew nothing about it.

The only thing we found was a small stove in bits when my husband was digging in the garden. We sent photographs of the pieces to a heritage organisation. It wasn’t ancient, disappointingly, but had probably been used to burn garden refuse.

Still exploring our newly purchased house, and yet to rip up carpet/wall paper as yet, but thus far have found:

• 1980's porn magazines. Complete with full bush, suspenders etc!
• Bags of old style light bulbs, before the energy saver ones came in
• Barely used outdoor dining table and chairs which were buried and overgrown in brambles

A ration book from the Second World War in a cupboard under the stairs. Old Victorian silver teaspoons in the garden.

My house dates from 1820s and when we were digging up the concrete floor to kitchen which had caused massive damp issues we found a 15m deep water well (flowing water at the bottom) and a large rainwater cistern. Put hatch and grill on the well and still undecided what to do on the cistern...14 years on

I want to live in an old house!!