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Old 19th May 2019, 9:46 pm   #1
Valvepower
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Default Things you unearth when you least expect….

Hi All,

Things you unearth when you least expect….

I’m taking on my late parents’ house and I’m in the throes of getting it re-wired. This means taking up all the carpets, including what was my old bedroom between 1978 (when mum, dad and myself moved in) and 1986 when I moved out at the age of 26.

On lifting the carpet in my old bedroom (I feel my mum and dad had replaced the carpet in the interim), I came upon what was the outline of a front panel for a 120-watt guitar amplifier I sprayed with lacquer on the floorboards. I remember building the amplifier some 40 years ago back in 1979 using a typical Roost/Hiwatt/Sound City chassis.

I have attached a picture, and you can just make out the outline of the holes for the power switch (on the right), indicator pots (in the middle) and input jacks (on the left) in the panel.

Good memories.

Terry
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Old 19th May 2019, 10:58 pm   #2
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

That's going to confuse the archaeologists/house historians in 200 years time Terry. It'll be a toss-up between a long-lost game involving dice and counters and an interpretation based on alien interventions, like crop circles. I feel you should scribble down the real explanation on a piece of paper and slip it under the floorboards now !

Cheers,

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Old 19th May 2019, 11:23 pm   #3
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

I found this under the kitchen floor last year. It must date from when the house was built, circa 1938.
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Old 20th May 2019, 1:42 am   #4
Graham G3ZVT
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

Whilst digging in the garden I unearthed this vulcanite "War Grade" bottle stopper
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A year or so after we moved in here in the late 70s I found a void behind the cupboard under the stairs. There was an unused 1953 calendar, the year I was born, and a bulging tin of pink salmon that I surmised was from the same year.

About 10 or 15 years ago I found a business size card behind the skirting board in the gas meter cupboard. it announced "We are now on the Telephone" and had a 1930s style. The telephone number of this house is still the same today.
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Old 20th May 2019, 4:03 am   #5
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

I moved an old desk out from a wall in the late 1980's at the Auckland Hospital in one of the doctor's offices and found a yellowed piece of paper that was typed with a mechanical typewriter in 1962.

It was directions from the head nurse advising other nurses how to conduct themselves in front of medical staff (mostly male doctors and female nurses then) In those days the nurses had very tidy & professional uniforms, even with hats & capes and the doctors all wore white coats and everybody was identifiable as hospital staff. (now its hard to tell, except that you can always spot the Psychiatrists because of the non threatening corduroy trousers and the woolly pullovers)

In any case the document advised the nurses to be ready for the doctors before they arrived, stand at attention, greet them politely etc, but the thing that really got me (to quote Ray Davies) was to make sure the tea and the biscuits were ready !

As a hungry intern on the ward I could only dream of what it must have been like to have had those biscuits & tea.

By the '80's of course if a doctor asked a nurse or anyone else on a ward to get them tea and biscuits likely they'd throw a four letter expletive your way, tell you to get it yourself and start a harassment case.
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Old 20th May 2019, 9:54 am   #6
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

At my last house we had a new carpet about 20 years ago in the sitting room!there was an inspection hatch in the floor, to confuse future owners my grandson and I dropped a note down this saying “Daniel C*********” looked down this hole on “date/mm/year”.
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Old 20th May 2019, 11:12 am   #7
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

When my auntie's carpet came up I found newspapers from 1926, the year she was married.
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Old 21st May 2019, 5:37 pm   #8
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

It's not just houses: a friend was restoring a MkII Jaguar and found partially-completed-but-screwed-up early-1960s Police evidence-forms stuffed into the heater-ducts leading to the rear seats.

I guess the baddies in the rear seats didn't deserve the benefit of the heater!
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Old 21st May 2019, 5:53 pm   #9
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Smile Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

When I was working at Perkins in Peterborough a few years ago we were asked to remove an old engine test bed console in order to fit a modern console. The original console from the 70’s had quite a few interesting items inside including a mail order pull out from a magazine to order the latest top 10 music tracks from the period. Tracks from Queen and other famous bands from the period were listed and you could choose either cassettes or 45 singles (no CD’s). I think I kept it somewhere here.

Also found at Perkins engine noise and vibration test cells a very old exhaust gas analyser screwed to a wall in a largely forgotten about dynamometer equipment room still powered up and operating but not connected to anything containing 2 Mullard ECC82’s and some very ancient semiconductors.

Christopher Capener
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Old 21st May 2019, 7:46 pm   #10
duncanlowe
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

When decorating a previous house we found this. I reckon it's still under the wallpaper.
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Old 21st May 2019, 8:40 pm   #11
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

Some future owner of my childhood home will find my initials burned in the floorboards with a soldering iron.
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Old 21st May 2019, 8:41 pm   #12
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

In our last house I found the remains of a mechanical call system. A couple of levers with the connecting wires cut off. One behind the front door and one in the basement. There was a length of aluminium tubing buried in the plaster on one of the rooms, possibly from a second one. It was a big Victorian house, so could have had a servant.
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Old 21st May 2019, 9:07 pm   #13
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Under the upstairs WC thousands of dog ends, we had a small leak and I removed a bit of downstairs ceiling to investigate (a lot easier that upping the tiled floor). They rained upon me, I think the sitter must have liked a fag on the bog and slipped the dead ends through a gap in the floorboards. A few tens of pounds of soggy dog ends isn't that much fun!

And a bit of a 1959 Daily Mail with the headline "Shock horror, Christmas in the shops three weeks beforehand" (or words to that effect).
 
Old 21st May 2019, 9:10 pm   #14
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

In an older house it's always fun to shine a bright light across larger timbers to see if there are carpenter's marks, initials, charms or consecration marks.
Four large horseshoes were found buried along the front wall of the house where i lived as a child. (circa 1800.) It was rendered in about 1910 and the large decorative designs inscribed into the walls were identical to typical consecration marks from hundreds of years earlier. My father reburied the horseshoes (on the quiet- it's one thing being cautious but not everybody wants to be thought of as superstitious)

Closer to home, my best (German) snips were found inside a car door, siezed up. Sat them in paraffin for a day then clamped them in a vice and forced them open by tapping a piece of wood between the handles. The car is gone; the snips are still good.

Dave
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Old 21st May 2019, 9:54 pm   #15
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

Our house was built in the early 1870s and what is now the kitchen was originally (and oddly) known as 'the dairy'. When we arrived in 1991 the floor was Marley-tiled on post-war council paving slabs on plastic sheeting on the bare earth. It was damp. So we dug it out for a proper hardcore-based concrete slab with DPM and screed. Half way through the digging we found a brick which proved to be part of the vaulting for a well - 4ft in diameter and 30ft deep ! The original Victorian lead pipe was still there - cut off close to the kitchen wall where presumably it would have risen into a hand pump. Just a few yards from the back door, which is in the kitchen, is still the brick built shed which used to house the privy. The consequences don't bear thinking about, but outbreaks of cholera happened regularly in this part of town until mains water was installed just before WW1. A distressing number of children died.

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 21st May 2019, 10:59 pm   #16
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

When my parents moved into their last house in 1997, I found some old local newspapers dating from 1979 stuffed into various places. One of the newspaper articles was about the latest piece of technology - Video Cassette Recorders ! Fascinating, now VCRs are practically obsolete and almost worthless, but back in 1979 a video recorder cost around £800. According to the same newspaper, you could buy a nearly new (3 year old) motor car for about the same price.

I keep meaning to scan the video recorders article and upload it. Even the newspaper, the High Wycombe Observer has long since ceased publication, and most of the local businesses that advertised in it have gone too, over the last 40 years.
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Old 22nd May 2019, 2:26 am   #17
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

In the loft of my 1901 house I found two NOS cast iron air bricks with sliding shutters buried under a thick layer of soot that had gathered over all those years.
They are obviously a bit rusty but both the shutters still slide from side to side.
Each house in the terrace has one visible in the outside back wall of the back bed room if it has not been sealed off from the outside.
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Old 22nd May 2019, 8:18 am   #18
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

I rewired our Edwardian terraced house in Lincoln in the middle '80s, and found that my '30s predecessor had kindly left me a steel rule, a brass protractor and a little oak-cased spirit level, as well as several Puck matchboxes. I've taken care of the bequest since, except I've not seen the steel rule lately and I fear I inadvertently dropped it into a box I was packing during a stint of eBay selling a few years ago. Never mind, perhaps it will have been welcome to its new owner who certainly wouldn't have been expecting it...

Paul
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Old 22nd May 2019, 11:28 am   #19
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

Many years ago I bought a Kaiser (Tandberg in disguise) stereogram, the style with the cocktail cabinet in the lower portion. The record deck was defunct so I started to remove the back panel so that I could take it out and I found a fiver on the floor. Thinking I had some how dropped it I picked it up put it in my wallet and carried on removing the back panel, when I found another fiver. I knew I hadn't dropped that one so I started to get curious. When I finally got the back panel off I found something like £120 in five pound notes, a book of tv licence stamps and some premium bonds. Wondering what to do I rang a policeman friend and he told me to keep it as I had bought it from a secondhand shop and all they would do would be pocket it and I had bought it in good faith. Not a bad buy for around £25
Steve
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Old 22nd May 2019, 11:54 am   #20
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Default Re: Things you unearth when you least expect….

When the organ in our parish church was restored a few years ago a note was found inside one of the cases dated 1915. It was addressed to whoever opened it up in the future and said that the writer hoped that the world would be a much better place than it was then.

Also,when I was moving some furniture a large plug socket fell down. it has sockets for two pins but they are more the size of a 15A plug than the usual 5A two pin plugs.

Finally, there are mysterious lengths of silk covered bell wire coming through the floor and attached to some of the pews. I imagine them connecting to a series of bulbs discreetly placed in the pulpit, green, amber and red like they used to have at political party conferences to show when the speech (sermon) was ok, beginning to run over and out of time!
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