This old house...

[Mick Mac]

Living in a Victorian house as most of ED do, do we ever think of the people that used to sit where we sit, sleep where we sleep...dig the same turf, cut the same grass, over the last 100 or more years.

Creepy....

[Brendan]

I live in a house that was built in the late 14 hundreds. The idea of how many people must have been born, lived, grown, dreamt and died within the 4 walls where I eat porridge, play with the baby and watch East Enders freaks me out man.

The bloody house was built 200 years before the country I am from existed. That?s odd.

[Brendan]

Scratch that. more like 400 years before it existed. 200 years before it was settled by Europeans.

[Dorothy]

Golly, where is your house Brendan?

[Mick Mac]

Only you can scratch your own posts Brendan.

[Sue]

This old house is falling down around my ears

I'm drowning in a river of my tears

Richard and Linda Thompson

:)-D

[nashoi]

When friends of mine recently moved to a late victorian house in Byfleet, hanging in the hall they found a photograph of the men who had built the place, posing outside the front door. On the back was a list of everyone who had lived there, the dates they'd moved in and out and what the house had cost.

[Brendan]

Not in ED. In the depths of deepest darkest Surrey.

[Mick Mac]

Brendan RIP. Very sad demise.

[HAL9000]

As a youngster I used to leave a time capsule in every house we lived in, usually embedded in a wall or under the floorboards - I wonder what happened to them sometimes?

Still waiting for my Am?lie Poulain moment.

[katie1997]

Mick Mac Wrote:

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> Living in a Victorian house as most of ED do, do

> we ever think of the people that used to sit where

> we sit, sleep where we sleep...dig the same turf,

> cut the same grass, over the last 100 or more

> years.

>

> Creepy....

Its a very good question Mick Mac.

I often think of the young scullery maid, worse for the wear after a night down the gin palace*, furtively tiptoeing up the narrow, creaky stairs, trying hard not to awaken the others in the house. With a day of drudgery and servitude to look forward to.

Not too dissimilar to me after a night on the lash that ended up in the back bar of a certain kebab house. On a school night. With a day of drudgery and servitude to look forward to.

*historical inaccuracies aside.

[Applespider]

Yes - I quite often think about the people who must have lived in my house - particularly since I live in a conversion so there's the added curiosity about what the rooms were used for.

I've never left a time capsule but when decorating and stripping wallpaper, I do like to leave a message scribbled on the plaster to be covered over by the new paper - I like to think that one day when someone finally strips it off, they'll get a surprise.

[Mick Mac]

I have been to that kebab house bar, as advertised on here, they charged me ?10 to get in. Is that normal...

[GSJ57]

If anyone wants to PM me their address, I can look up who lived in your house on the 1901 or 1891 census. A policeman, wife and 5 children were in my old house in Rodwell Rd in 1901!

[Annette Curtain]

When you pull down a ceiling in an old house, the dark grey dust contains dead skin cells from all that have lived there before.

Ready to be inhaled.

( Mmmmmmm nice ) ::oA.

[Huggers]

We are only the third people to live in our Victorian terrace. Our house remains pretty original with rooms arranged without being knocked together.

The sisters of the builder were the first owners. Followed by an old lady who ended up living with her sister in an informally divided house.

The two things we changed, eventually, was to move the huge bathroom at the back to the middle of the house. I think they were just stuck on the back of the houses when bathrooms became de rigeur.

Also adding a window to the back of the kitchen overlooking the garden.

So many houses we looked at were ''blind'' at the back, with ony french doors from the ''back sitting room' overlooking the garden.

This is because no one wanted to be in the garden and have to look at the skullery maid in the kitchen working away.

A couple of years ago, to make room for a piano, we knocked away a very solid looking corner''shelf'' in our dining room- it turned out not to be a shelf, but the chimney from the old copper boiler in the kitchen running to the main dining room chimney.

Some of the original wallpaper appeared when a radiator leaked onto it and we have exposed it all in the hall.

We have succumbed so much to the original spirit of our house that sometimes I think it is us that are haunting it.

[Alec John Moore]

I often find parts of old clay smoking pipes and occasionally old medicine bottles when I am digging the garden. When consdierign the previous inhabitants my thoughts sometimes go to the Mr Pooter character from Diary of a Nobody. Although the book it is mostly about his obsession with his position in society, it does give some insight into the Victorian middle class household.

[louisiana]

This house was apparently built by the one-time Chief Scout for London, or that is what I've been told by someone who lived in this road some considerable time ago.

Oddness: I have spent time (as a child) on Brownsea Island, the location of the first ever scout camp (but not as part of any scouting thing).

[????]

I never really get it with my house but do quite frequently in a historic place like London. So a pint in the Lamb & Flag and you think Dryden boozed in here, ditto the Dog and Dickens, the CPT and Jah

[brum]

I love discovering faint echoes of the lives of those who lived in my house before me.

Less popular are the choices of paint colour left by the previous occupants... orange walls FFS!

[daizie]

Three suicides here.. spooky .

[Narnia]

daizie Wrote:

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> Three suicides here.. spooky .

Was that before or since you arrived Daizie?;-)

[daizie]

Ha ha very funny. Infact that is very funny :))

[katie1997]

Mick Mac Wrote:

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> I have been to that kebab house bar, as advertised

> on here, they charged me ?10 to get in. Is that

> normal...

hahahahaha, you're joking I hope? they charged paid me ?10 to leave.

sticking to the thread, I once stayed in a 14c house in Shropshire - now a B&B (horrendous owner). Anyway, our bedroom was absolutely massive, all walls panelled with ancient wood, and complete with Priest hole.

The place oozed history and a sense of past times but oh god, it didn't make for a restful night.

Creepy was an understatement.

[Mick Mac]

daizie Wrote:

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> Ha ha very funny. Infact that is very funny :))

very unusual for declan I agree.