In today's installment of "weird and inexplicable shit we have found when doing up our house", I give you...

[ShowOfHands]

A mummified frog.

Add this to gaping holes literally papered over, bricked up empty spaces (making the room 15% smaller for no discernible reason), a live cable simply cut in half, secret notes, walls held up with cement and gravel and a room we didn't know we had.

Anybody else found anything weird while renovating?

In a previous house we found lots of the small school milk bottles buried in the garden!

@GinJeanie

Friends of ours found a pile of porn mags, a jar of pickled onions and half a bottle of whisky in their loft when they moved in... 😬

🤣🤣🤣

That's a party right there. I dread to think where the pickled onions went.

My dad found a railway timetable from 1892 pasted to the bedroom wall. Our local station was closed in the early 60s, so it was quite interesting. Also the people who put it there had written " I hung the paper and Frank held the candle".

In the 1980s my parents bought a house, the oldest part of which was 17th century. It was a victim of Barry Bucknell style DIY, so many of the original features were covered up/boxed in. They uncovered two lovely large brick fireplaces - one with fittings for a spit. In my bedroom there was a trap door in the floor. We were told that this was a coffin chute - the stairs were too narrow and twisty to manoeuvre furniture (or bodies!) so they could be lowered through the floor instead! I slept with the light on for a long time... We also found, in another bedroom, some built in shelves with newspaper laid on top. Under the sheets of newspaper were £20 notes - about £2,000 in total!

We left something for the people we sold our last house to to find and get excited about. DH's great grandfather was a not very talented oil painter. He had done lots of pictures that were based on the great masters, we had a picture of his that was a bit like the Haywain displayed in poor light, it was passably OK. When we moved we left one of them in the attic, sort of half hidden. We had visions of the new people finding it and thinking it might be very valuable. WE have a warped sense of humour.

The people who bought my Mums house might have been chuffed to find the family silver & her jewelry box, except when we were clearing the house after her death I asked DB where the they were, assuming they had been taken for safety from pilfering carers. He said he didn't have a clue, thats when I remembered the stash behind boards in an old laundry cupboard.

I have a friend who's mother apparently filled in the entire downstairs/ cellar with concrete, where the old kitchens would gave been in the family pile, she said it was impossible to heat... Heartbreaking

My sister found a skeleton whilst renovating the kitchen. That slightly delayed the renovations!

Many, many years ago, while doing up a farmhouse, we found three headstones from the 1800s in a tiny, doored-off crawlspace in the basement. It was a little off-putting.

Our old house was a large gatekeepers cottage, when the house it cares for went into disrepair they decided to split it into two houses.... by building a wall band down the middle.
We had plugs/switches/pipes that were all relevant to the neighbours and them us.

The only thing I've ever found was a xmas tree from the previous owner up the loft

When we moved into our house we found an old, yellowed envelope full of human hair, and written on the front was ‘this is my hair’

It was so weird and I laugh every time I remember it!

Built in wardrobes literally made on top of a boot and a sandal. The whole house has got cowboy written all over it!

Just found a new one!

The old gas boiler that has just died can't be taken out as it's actually the main support for the tiled kitchen worktop. The tiles are glued to it with fire cement.

I'm certain my house has a cellar. I just can't find the way in!

Hang on a minute - I'm confused by the one where the L-shaped flat had a hidden room with six-foot piles of earth. How was the found space cleared out to make two bedrooms without disturbing the earth and finding out if there was anything in there?

I've only ever found old newspapers in my place - nothing else.

Parents in their old house found some nice Victorian/Edwardian flower paintings/drawings - at the same time when inexplicably (no one wore perfume no flowers etc) there was a strong smell of flowers in the house in the hall area from time to time. They found out afterwards sisters had lived there - older children of the house.

Their NDN's - for years the house was owned by relatives then it was sold - I think in our house there were strange symbols (satanic?!) but in attic on a chimney breast I think - in NDN's house there was an old car which had 666 as part of number plate - when my DB (a teenager) saw the car - which was being sold, it freaked him right out! nothing bad happened though apart from usual stuff!

@Mamanyt

Many, many years ago, while doing up a farmhouse, we found three headstones from the 1800s in a tiny, doored-off crawlspace in the basement. It was a little off-putting.

that would freak me out, and I'm fairly rational!

@Iwantacookie

The only thing I've ever found was a xmas tree from the previous owner up the loft

Errrr I think that may have been my old house! It was much later I remembered I had not removed the xmas tree from the loft! Sorry.

As for my own finds, I had a new bathroom fitted in my present home some years ago and when the guys removed the old bath there were magazines and food wrappers, a rotten old sock and cigarette ends littered there. I remember feeling quite pi!!ed off that the previous workmen had done that. No need for it at all.

A men's black latex suit stuffed at the top and back of a built in wardrobe. They were selling after a divorce, so I guess he didn't think he'd need it anymore!

An anderson shelter was built into the back of the outhouse in one of the houses we lived in growing up. It was a great den.

@CleverCatty
The symbols on the attic chimney sound interesting. Could they have been witch marks? I think people carved/scratched them near entrance points in a house to protect themselves against witches and evil spirits.

A 'mummified' corpse of a dog under the floorboards on the ground floor. Perfectly preserved and recognisable but must have been very old - it was a probate sale having previously been in the same ownership for at least half a century. 1890s London terrace. I've never been sure whether it had been placed there deliberately ( some sort of builders' superstition?) or had had the misfortune to get under there and been unable to escape.

[quote PlumKetchup]@CleverCatty
The symbols on the attic chimney sound interesting. Could they have been witch marks? I think people carved/scratched them near entrance points in a house to protect themselves against witches and evil spirits.[/quote]
I've got no idea! My DM still owns the house - they're in the attic - I think they had moons or something there too.

I might tell DB that (when I speak to him!) just to reassure him many years too late! Only a standard Victorian house though, maybe too late or not for witches/evil spirit stuff but who knows!

My next door neighbour is a plumber . A few years ago he was asked to change the bathroom suite of an elderly mans house who had died as the son was going to sell it.
He took off the bath panel and found the mans life savings , many many thousands of pounds. For some reason he panicked and phoned the police ( even though he had the sons number ) they came around and stayed with him whilst he phoned the dead mans son and then they all left.
He went back and finished the job but the son only ever paid him the cost of it.

@ilovesushi Now I'm imagining a gangster sat in the deckchair smoking while he 'interrogates' two unfortunates from another gang. And the mounds .....