Why would an old utility room have a large concrete slab full of dirt?

[Scanson]

Why on earth would someone have a concrete structure like this inside a utility room !?

House built 1800 we presume this used to be an outbuilding before being attached to the house via an extension mid 1900s.

Under the tiles is a thick slab of concrete, then a plastic membrane and then filled with dirt & rubble.

Its massive. Could we be looking at an old outhouse area? (Why fill with dirt though?) Or a weird potting area before they got a greenhouse? Again wouldnt you clear it before tiling over it? I dont think it was a cold slab because it is underneath a south facing window. PRAYING its not some unsolved missing persons case 🥶

I'm on a laptop but I can't see the new images, do you think you used up your "allowance" with the internal photos OP? I'm enthralled!

Could it have been a dairy? 1930s cement slabs and floor bricked or cemented up to hide the gap underneath?

Our previous house was built around 1800 and we decided to built a plinth behind the stairs to hold our music system and playstation stuff. DH took up some tiles and there was earth. We thought it shouldn't be there, so started taking it all out. then I realised it was the actual earth and that part of the cottage had no foundations. Normal back then I suppose. We put a membrane down and tiled over the top. Maybe the previous owners of your house did something like we had to.

I’m having issues posting a picture of what I’m trying to say!
Come back witches tomb poster. I’m all agog!

My dad's house has 3 wells around it, so it definitely could be another.

Here it is! It was too large of a file size originally

the middle bit looks to have been bricked up more recently than the sections either side - I wonder if it was a cold/ice store?

You could find some information from old maps - searchable online these days.
Is there a local history society that could shed some light on it?
Is there a local history section in your library?
I am invested!

Definitely at least one ghost and half a dozen old secrets. Sorry, op.💐

I have a window seat exactly like that in my old cottage too, OP. Only mine has a wooden top. I'm now side-eyeing it like crazy. No records for my house any further back than 1972 when the row of cottages were all bought up and added on to, so I'm no help.

Would love to see a comparison picture of yours too if you have one! How strange these old houses are.. gotta love them, we have so many mysteries and because it was a probate with no living relatives we are totally clueless!

Laughing but will be crying into wine at 3am unable to sleep for fear of a body inside . . . 💔

I HAVE to know, i side eye it every day so will definitely be removing in the coming months

Local history society is a good shout, I will look up and contact!

No luck with history in local library and have found all I can online so far...

Dirt and rubble, to fill the space under the concrete slab which is the window ledge?

Right, attaching my picture here but it might take ages to be allowed. Ignore the back view of my dog sulking on the windowseat, the picture was taken when we'd just moved in.

No outhouse here, this is the main front room. But the walls are very thick and I suspect that rubble has been used to fill the gap between outer and inner.

It is strange, either side is herringbone and middle just standard brickwork, thats what led someone to thinking maybe an old door but I think its possible it was used as an access point into whatever is inside the utility room. Maybe it was an animal manger of some sort..

Im not sure an ice store would have been a reality for who would have been living here in a 2 up 2 down no kitchen just an inglenook fire, from what ive seen that was more for the rich and wealthy back in the day? But it could have been a cold store, i still wonder why anyone would fill it up with rubble & put a huge chunk of concrete over it!

There is a drainage pipe that runs just under the far corner of the building into the septic tank.

That does look familiar! Where abouts are you located? We are East Sussex.

Not sure what height yours is but mine is far too high and deep to even be considered for a "window seat"

What’s on the out side wall? It may have been some where that animals were kept and the trough was filled from outside. I’ve seen this.

Could it have been a doorway with cubbyholes or coal holes either side? The concrete slab also reminds me of the dairy/cheese making area when we farmed. It kept the milk churns cold and had pipe work with cold water circulating through it to keep it cold.

North Yorkshire. Mine is likewise quite high - I use it as a window seat but it's too high to be really comfortable, but I don't have another use for it. The dog sits up there so she can growl at passers by.

I wonder if it's just the building style. My house is (I think) about the same age as yours and, like I said, the walls are very thick. But because it has to be thinner where the windows go, I think they just capped off the bit of wall they had to knock out in order to fit the window, and the stuff in the hole is just the rubble that is in the gap between the inner and outer wall (because of the way they built houses back then - thick stone walls but not solid stone, two layers and rubble and junk in between the two).

It is literally just how they filled thick walls, use any old stuff lying about.

The outside picture looks very like the entrance to.a coal cellar. Where I live there are thousands of two.up.two down terraces and you see lots of filled in holes like that. I think it is where they poured the coal down to be stored in the cellars. Most cellars are bricked up inside now.
We actually have a cellar in our victorian semi and the tiled surfaces you see inside are the same as ours. They were used for cold storage for meat and such like apparently. They look like raised brick benches with quarry tiles on top.

Old family home c1700 under the scullery was a water storage tank fed by an overflow from a well, the tank had hand pump.

A copper, removed and gentrified with the lovely clay tiles, leaving the original support for the copper washing bit and the rear flue bricked up.
Would the room work as a scullery, (think utility room but instead of a washing machine you light a fire under the copper and boil water in a big caldron). Direct access to outside for hanging out washing?

Probably builders just shoving dirt in there to save disposal and maybe to insulate