DIGGING UP THE PAST

The soil level under the living room floor was far too high and the floor joists were mostly rotten so quite a lot of soil had to be dug out.  And we found treasure!  Well, mostly we found rubbish, but some of it is HISTORICAL.

Some of me 'treasure'

Musket balls, glass bottle stoppers, broken bottles, clay pipes, buttons, marbles, slate pencils, button hooks, thimbles, scissors, you name it, we found it.  Mostly in the soil underneath the living room floor.But we also found bones... so many bones...!

The first items found under the floor

The first bones we spotted were sticking out of the soil, immediately underneath the floorboards.The police had to be called, of course, and they took them away in an evidence bag and banned me from my own living room while they checked what they were.  Eventually they decided they were animal bones and that they weren't interested, and I was able to carry on excavating.There were a lot more bones, shells, and lots of broken glass.

But perhaps the most interesting find was under the fireplace:

Pre-existing brick-edged firepit in floor underneath current chimney stack

I wasn't able to go very far underneath (because the chimney was sitting on top) but underneath my fireplace, is another fireplace!  There were a lot of charred bones under there, with a ring of stones around the edge showing that the original fireplace came further out into the room than the current one.   It looks like the original building either did not have a chimney at all (just a hole in the roof) or had a wooden hood for the smoke, meaning it might be even older than 400 years.

Bracelet found in the old fireplace