Fascinating Helen! Sorry no buried treasure though. I’ve always thought about previous occupants of houses too, they feel so close. I grew up in an ancient thatched farmhouse with a huge iron hook in the kitchen ceiling for hanging up animal carcasses. The whole place had flagstone floors and in one room there were two worn channels in the stone underneath where we thought the table would have been. My dad worked out that they must have been created by the farmer sliding his hobnail boots along the floor as he stretched out his legs after he’d finished his (meaty) dinner!
Loved this especially seeing the photos and hearing your builder's stories; Sunday is the day I get a lie in so totally opening to talking and reading about our interior worlds. We live in 17th century converted stable with a clock on it. The clock was put on for King George's visit. I imagine time travelling in it to other planets all the time mainly because it never changes from 7 O'clock which was the local Lovejoy's favourite time... now it's my favourite time with a cuppa in bed. Just need to reset the body clock for my lie in's. Time to curl up in the duvet now with a cuppa and good book.
So glad you got to read it on your lie in! I hoped that might happen. Your house sounds extraordinary, so much history! That clock must hold the key to time travel, surely, like Tom’s Midnight’s Garden. Enjoy your lie in!
I think it does! Or maybe like the Time Traveller's Wife...it is unusual however the grandkids love it for all the toilets it has, that's was definitely the main feature when they chatted to friends about it as well as that it used to belong to Queen Elizabeth the first. Its actually a two bedroomed end terrace that we extended when you see on paperwork but in our mind's eye and history it means a lot more to us.
Love the old house chat! I live in a small village on the Black Isle in the Highlands - our house was built in 1756. We gutted it when we bought it a few years ago and found all sorts of cool stuff in the walls - receipts from the 1930s, an old shoe maybe from the same time and of course the obligatory 1970s porn mag 😂. I made a wee time capsule with photographs and a letter and put it back in for someone to find in a few (hundred?) years!
Wow! Especially the porn mag 😂 . We’ve been opening old fireplaces and I hoped we might find an old shoe to ward off evil spirits, but no such luck so far.
This was a nice start into sunday morning! I was still in bed when I read your post - now i'm sitting at my kitchen table, reading again. I love the atmosphere in the pictures! The old house, the foggy seashore ... and in the midst of this somehow melancholic setting your corious and humorous energy! This summer i will visit Edinburgh (first. time in Scotland) and i am sooo looking forward to the city, the old houses, the scottish hills around and the sea! I am open for recommendations what to see there🙂
And yes: please keep telling us about your house. I love this chat!
I had hoped this might make a good post the read in bed, thank you!
You will love Edinburgh, I just booked a spot on one of their underground tours of the old town. I can’t wait! There’s a great vintage clothes shop called Armstrongs if you’re into vintage clothes. Enjoy!
I’ve experienced that underground tour in Edinburgh… it’s genuinely creepy, if you don’t get too hammy an actor as the tour guide! Amazing seeing a front door and street lamp on a narrow subterranean street… you can’t help but wonder about all the lives that went on in those rooms.
PS - love the house chat - looking forward to the next one! Xx
Oh we will definitly book a tour - if underground i have to see,i tend to be claustrophobic, so it depends on my day mood. Thanks for the shop recommendation! I love vintage clothes :-)
I love this post! I also live in a 1890 flat here in Aberdeen but I got nothing apart from bad insulation and condensation. It just baffles me because in Turkey you wouldnt want to be living in a house older than 30 years old and here I am living in one from the 1890!
Yes! I find condensations slightly bonkers in that I have to hoover my windows in winter but on the plus side it means we have invested in the new help - a robot cleaner. It's been a welcome addition to the family however the robot got more praise on how much dust it picks up than I have ever got in the couple of decades cleaning! 🤔😂So we have named the robot Madge after his or her majesty. We sometimes wonder if indeed it is the Queen reincarnated because the robot did appear shortly after her passing...🤫
Might invest in a dehumidifier machine next - cant wait to name that one! Suggestions welcome...
Oh may be I should hoover my windows as well! Is that a thing!? I have never known! I have multiple little dehumidifiers around the house and they do work until they dont 😄 love the robot’s name!
What a fun house chat! The US is so young, we don't have that many wonderful quirky old houses--I love hearing about them. A friend up the road bought a house which had an inordinate number of coat hooks throughout it; one bedroom had a screen door; and in a closet was a bucket labeled "JOE'S FOOT" 🤷♀️😂
Brilliant! I love those strange mysteries left by previous occupants, the bucket! And what was with the hooks? we lived in a flat in London where the shelves were glued to the walls! Glued! We worked it out when we put a book on a shelf and it fell down!
Such a wonderful read! More of this please 😊 I grew up in an old house in Somerset that had once been traditional farm cottages — the downstairs would have been for the animals, with the living quarters upstairs. The floors downstairs were stone-flagged with no insulation. Wonderfully cool in summer, but not so good in winter! No bodies under the floor as far as I know, but we did found some coins from the 1700s when we took down the interior wall in one of the upstairs rooms.
Wow, your childhood home sounds incredible. I grew up in a converted barn, it had housed farm animals too. Flippin’ freezing in winter! Never found any 17C coins tho, amazing!
A lovely little glimpse for a Sunday morning 😊 I explore old houses in my dreams sometimes, I have no idea why but that’s where my subconscious goes on occasion 😂 Our house is only 20 to 30 years old so not very interesting historiography speaking, but I lived for a while in an old house in a little village near Winchester that was haunted. My telephone would ring at odd hours when no one had actually called and the answering machine would switch on in the middle of the night or there would be a message blinking when I came home but nothing recorded except my own outgoing message... I changed the telephone 3 times thinking it was the machine, but it still happened on the new handset 😱 I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have no idea what another explanation might be!!
This is great, I love the histories of houses. I grew up in Durham in a house that was built on the site of an old pub, so we were always finding old glass bottles, clay pipes (the smoking kind) and once a beautiful glazed tile which has accompanied me to all the places I’ve lived since. When my brother and I were kids, my mum spoke to a psychic who said there was a presence in the house at the top of the stairs but ‘not to worry because he would never harm the bairns’. Obviously I became convinced he’d been murdered in the pub and that we’d dig him up in the garden one day. No wonder my little brother used to have nightmares!
Loving the old photos. I always love the photos of you heading to the beach with Peggy too. We’ve done a walk round the walls at Berwick but never done the beach or lighthouse. Hopefully this summer. That hole in the floor made me anxious for you but the insulation sounds lush. Looking forward to having a bit more of my nosiness satisfied next Sunday! And yes I definitely read your writing in your voice.
Oh how I wish our house had history like this! I love hearing these stories so much. I live in Sydney in an area that was only developed in the early 50's as housing for returned servicemen. Before then it was bush and farming land. The best I've found is carved initials in some concrete, and fabulous wallpaper from the 70s when we did out kitchen renovation. You made me giggle when you said you try really hard to time travel - i do this all the time!!!
Fantastic story.My mum bought an old farmhouse in the North of Holland in the seventies.It had no plumbing, a pump with a well outside, a washhouse to do the laundry , a huge derelict chicken shed and at least seven fruit trees.The floor in the kitchen was concrete and always sweaty , it turned out it was built on a well .It had inbuilt beds in cupboards called bedsteden which is a traditional thing in Holland in old houses. Sadly my mum modernised it all If I was rich I would buy it back and restore it into the unique and eccentric place it was .
Just catching up with this Helen and I so enjoyed it. Thank you. I currently live in quite a new house- well it's about twenty years old now- and I really long to be in a house that tells stories. Looking forward to the next installment.
Here is a snippet of a memory..... A love for older homes began when I was very young. We were visiting my Auntie RoRo in Chicago. She had a wonderful victorian home. When all the aunts and uncles and cousins visited, us kids ran wild though each floor playing Sardines. I loved my Auntie RoRo because she didn't care. Sardines was a crazy version of hide and go seek. One person would hide and then after the countdown, all would go looking for that person. If you found them, you quietly hid with them. Sometimes we were packed into a closet or behind a bed or in an attic room or wherever. When the last person stumbled on the cousin sardines, everyone yelled and the house would echo with peels of laughter. And so my love of old houses began. I wanted one just like Auntie RoRo’s.
Oh this brings back memories! Me and my cousins used to play that too, in the old converted barn I grew up in. Your Auntie RoRo sounds very cool, the kind of woman we all dream of being!
I love hearing about old houses! We’re renting a house that’s old by western Canadian settler standards, which just means 1905. Still, I like to think about the ladies in their big swishy skirts living here when it was new and the city full of great cedars and logging men. Our landlords have stuffed the attic and basement full of their family possessions from the 30s on. We once found moose antlers!
Am I the only one to read Helen's writings in her tone and accent? :)
That was a pleasant little walk in the past.. and present 🙂
That made me giggle, I almost did a voice record for this post, but lost track of time. Thank you.
I do too but not out loud as it then goes a little awry!
😂
Me too :)
Ha ha ... no!
Me too 🥰
Fascinating Helen! Sorry no buried treasure though. I’ve always thought about previous occupants of houses too, they feel so close. I grew up in an ancient thatched farmhouse with a huge iron hook in the kitchen ceiling for hanging up animal carcasses. The whole place had flagstone floors and in one room there were two worn channels in the stone underneath where we thought the table would have been. My dad worked out that they must have been created by the farmer sliding his hobnail boots along the floor as he stretched out his legs after he’d finished his (meaty) dinner!
Your childhood home sounds like a very special place. The hook! Terrifying!
Loved this especially seeing the photos and hearing your builder's stories; Sunday is the day I get a lie in so totally opening to talking and reading about our interior worlds. We live in 17th century converted stable with a clock on it. The clock was put on for King George's visit. I imagine time travelling in it to other planets all the time mainly because it never changes from 7 O'clock which was the local Lovejoy's favourite time... now it's my favourite time with a cuppa in bed. Just need to reset the body clock for my lie in's. Time to curl up in the duvet now with a cuppa and good book.
So glad you got to read it on your lie in! I hoped that might happen. Your house sounds extraordinary, so much history! That clock must hold the key to time travel, surely, like Tom’s Midnight’s Garden. Enjoy your lie in!
I think it does! Or maybe like the Time Traveller's Wife...it is unusual however the grandkids love it for all the toilets it has, that's was definitely the main feature when they chatted to friends about it as well as that it used to belong to Queen Elizabeth the first. Its actually a two bedroomed end terrace that we extended when you see on paperwork but in our mind's eye and history it means a lot more to us.
The toilets! Aren’t kids great? Yes, a house on paper is one thing, a house you live in and feel it’s history every day is another.
Love the old house chat! I live in a small village on the Black Isle in the Highlands - our house was built in 1756. We gutted it when we bought it a few years ago and found all sorts of cool stuff in the walls - receipts from the 1930s, an old shoe maybe from the same time and of course the obligatory 1970s porn mag 😂. I made a wee time capsule with photographs and a letter and put it back in for someone to find in a few (hundred?) years!
Wow! Especially the porn mag 😂 . We’ve been opening old fireplaces and I hoped we might find an old shoe to ward off evil spirits, but no such luck so far.
I didn’t realise the shoe was to ward off evil spirits! We took it out thinking we’d display it somewhere but maybe it’s safest to put it back in...
Oh yes, best to put it back. You don’t want to be pestered with evil spirits!
What a lovely idea to make a time capsule.
This was a nice start into sunday morning! I was still in bed when I read your post - now i'm sitting at my kitchen table, reading again. I love the atmosphere in the pictures! The old house, the foggy seashore ... and in the midst of this somehow melancholic setting your corious and humorous energy! This summer i will visit Edinburgh (first. time in Scotland) and i am sooo looking forward to the city, the old houses, the scottish hills around and the sea! I am open for recommendations what to see there🙂
And yes: please keep telling us about your house. I love this chat!
I had hoped this might make a good post the read in bed, thank you!
You will love Edinburgh, I just booked a spot on one of their underground tours of the old town. I can’t wait! There’s a great vintage clothes shop called Armstrongs if you’re into vintage clothes. Enjoy!
I’ve experienced that underground tour in Edinburgh… it’s genuinely creepy, if you don’t get too hammy an actor as the tour guide! Amazing seeing a front door and street lamp on a narrow subterranean street… you can’t help but wonder about all the lives that went on in those rooms.
PS - love the house chat - looking forward to the next one! Xx
Oh we will definitly book a tour - if underground i have to see,i tend to be claustrophobic, so it depends on my day mood. Thanks for the shop recommendation! I love vintage clothes :-)
I love this post! I also live in a 1890 flat here in Aberdeen but I got nothing apart from bad insulation and condensation. It just baffles me because in Turkey you wouldnt want to be living in a house older than 30 years old and here I am living in one from the 1890!
Yes, we get condensation too! Old houses are a big mix of good and bad aren’t they?
Definitely!
Yes! I find condensations slightly bonkers in that I have to hoover my windows in winter but on the plus side it means we have invested in the new help - a robot cleaner. It's been a welcome addition to the family however the robot got more praise on how much dust it picks up than I have ever got in the couple of decades cleaning! 🤔😂So we have named the robot Madge after his or her majesty. We sometimes wonder if indeed it is the Queen reincarnated because the robot did appear shortly after her passing...🤫
Might invest in a dehumidifier machine next - cant wait to name that one! Suggestions welcome...
Oh may be I should hoover my windows as well! Is that a thing!? I have never known! I have multiple little dehumidifiers around the house and they do work until they dont 😄 love the robot’s name!
We use this https://www.amazon.co.uk/K%C3%A4rcher-16332010-Window-Yellow-Black/dp/B082XTFKCM/ref=zg_bs_1938849031_sccl_1/259-8782512-5037529?psc=1 but it just feels like we are hoovering the window
Oh thanks for this! Just added to my basket!
Yes we have one too, it’s a game changer in an old house1
What a fun house chat! The US is so young, we don't have that many wonderful quirky old houses--I love hearing about them. A friend up the road bought a house which had an inordinate number of coat hooks throughout it; one bedroom had a screen door; and in a closet was a bucket labeled "JOE'S FOOT" 🤷♀️😂
Brilliant! I love those strange mysteries left by previous occupants, the bucket! And what was with the hooks? we lived in a flat in London where the shelves were glued to the walls! Glued! We worked it out when we put a book on a shelf and it fell down!
Such a wonderful read! More of this please 😊 I grew up in an old house in Somerset that had once been traditional farm cottages — the downstairs would have been for the animals, with the living quarters upstairs. The floors downstairs were stone-flagged with no insulation. Wonderfully cool in summer, but not so good in winter! No bodies under the floor as far as I know, but we did found some coins from the 1700s when we took down the interior wall in one of the upstairs rooms.
Wow, your childhood home sounds incredible. I grew up in a converted barn, it had housed farm animals too. Flippin’ freezing in winter! Never found any 17C coins tho, amazing!
A lovely little glimpse for a Sunday morning 😊 I explore old houses in my dreams sometimes, I have no idea why but that’s where my subconscious goes on occasion 😂 Our house is only 20 to 30 years old so not very interesting historiography speaking, but I lived for a while in an old house in a little village near Winchester that was haunted. My telephone would ring at odd hours when no one had actually called and the answering machine would switch on in the middle of the night or there would be a message blinking when I came home but nothing recorded except my own outgoing message... I changed the telephone 3 times thinking it was the machine, but it still happened on the new handset 😱 I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have no idea what another explanation might be!!
Oh wow, spooky! I would love to see a ghost, but as Katie says about drawing, I think I hold the bar of soap too tight, and never see anything 😂
I think seeing a ghost would be terrifying on so many levels! I do not want to see one ever 😂
This is great, I love the histories of houses. I grew up in Durham in a house that was built on the site of an old pub, so we were always finding old glass bottles, clay pipes (the smoking kind) and once a beautiful glazed tile which has accompanied me to all the places I’ve lived since. When my brother and I were kids, my mum spoke to a psychic who said there was a presence in the house at the top of the stairs but ‘not to worry because he would never harm the bairns’. Obviously I became convinced he’d been murdered in the pub and that we’d dig him up in the garden one day. No wonder my little brother used to have nightmares!
Wow, that sounds amazing! Your very own ghost who was kind to bairns. I grew up in Darlington and was bairn too 😂
Loving the old photos. I always love the photos of you heading to the beach with Peggy too. We’ve done a walk round the walls at Berwick but never done the beach or lighthouse. Hopefully this summer. That hole in the floor made me anxious for you but the insulation sounds lush. Looking forward to having a bit more of my nosiness satisfied next Sunday! And yes I definitely read your writing in your voice.
The lighthouse walk is always bracing (bloody freezing) but worth it! Love that you hear my Darlo accent in my writing! 😂
Oh how I wish our house had history like this! I love hearing these stories so much. I live in Sydney in an area that was only developed in the early 50's as housing for returned servicemen. Before then it was bush and farming land. The best I've found is carved initials in some concrete, and fabulous wallpaper from the 70s when we did out kitchen renovation. You made me giggle when you said you try really hard to time travel - i do this all the time!!!
Ha! So glad I’m not alone in the time travel obsession! I love discovering old wallpaper, it makes the previous occupants feel so tangible!
Fantastic story.My mum bought an old farmhouse in the North of Holland in the seventies.It had no plumbing, a pump with a well outside, a washhouse to do the laundry , a huge derelict chicken shed and at least seven fruit trees.The floor in the kitchen was concrete and always sweaty , it turned out it was built on a well .It had inbuilt beds in cupboards called bedsteden which is a traditional thing in Holland in old houses. Sadly my mum modernised it all If I was rich I would buy it back and restore it into the unique and eccentric place it was .
Oh wow, what a history! Yes I think our house must have had those beds too. If only we could catch a glimpse!
Just catching up with this Helen and I so enjoyed it. Thank you. I currently live in quite a new house- well it's about twenty years old now- and I really long to be in a house that tells stories. Looking forward to the next installment.
Here is a snippet of a memory..... A love for older homes began when I was very young. We were visiting my Auntie RoRo in Chicago. She had a wonderful victorian home. When all the aunts and uncles and cousins visited, us kids ran wild though each floor playing Sardines. I loved my Auntie RoRo because she didn't care. Sardines was a crazy version of hide and go seek. One person would hide and then after the countdown, all would go looking for that person. If you found them, you quietly hid with them. Sometimes we were packed into a closet or behind a bed or in an attic room or wherever. When the last person stumbled on the cousin sardines, everyone yelled and the house would echo with peels of laughter. And so my love of old houses began. I wanted one just like Auntie RoRo’s.
-Leslie
Oh this brings back memories! Me and my cousins used to play that too, in the old converted barn I grew up in. Your Auntie RoRo sounds very cool, the kind of woman we all dream of being!
I love hearing about old houses! We’re renting a house that’s old by western Canadian settler standards, which just means 1905. Still, I like to think about the ladies in their big swishy skirts living here when it was new and the city full of great cedars and logging men. Our landlords have stuffed the attic and basement full of their family possessions from the 30s on. We once found moose antlers!
Wow, cedars, logging men and moose antlers! Amazing!