In 2021, property renovator Nick Cryer and his team of contractors were stripping the plaster from the basement of a Georgian Crescent apartment in Bristol, England, when they saw writing on the walls.
It was a list—upon closer inspection, a list of dates.
“Someone had kept a diary of every time they’d been down into the lower basement using it as an air raid shelter while Bristol was being bombed in the Second World War,” Cryer said.
With nearly 40% of England’s housing stock built before 1946, many British homeowners may be sitting on history without realizing it. Beyond the typical surprises that home renovators might encounter—mold, sagging floors, faulty wiring—some U.K. homeowners have also stumbled upon hidden treasures buried within their walls.
While renovating the basement of a Georgian Crescent apartment in Bristol, workers found that the previous homeowners had used it as a bomb shelter during World War II, logging each time the air raid sirens went off.
Courtesy of Berkeley Place
Cryer, whose Bristol-based firm Berkeley Place specializes in historic property renovations, often works with homeowners to preserve the historic and unique qualities of their home.
For the Bristol home, his team removed the plaster around the wall surrounding the log, but left it in place, protecting it as they completed the other work. At the end of the project, they covered the wall writing with glass, highlighting that piece of history for the homeowners.
“Thankfully no one had ever painted over it,” Cryer said.
While Cryer hasn’t come across any other such diaries, he’s used to uncovering hidden features that add to a home’s historic charm. He has stripped back layers of floor to find beautiful finishes below. He’s also removed low ceilings, previously installed to reduce heating costs, and found ornate, glass ceilings hidden above.
“There’s always bits of treasure in these homes,” he said.
Striking Gold
On rare occasions, homeowners may come across an actual treasure trove.
In 2019, a couple decided to upgrade the kitchen of their 18th-century home in Ellerby, a village in North Yorkshire. While removing the concrete foundation floor, they dislodged a clump of earth and spotted a sliver of gold.
At first glance, it seemed to be an electrical cable. But upon digging further, they found a small pot the size of a soda can, containing 260 gold coins.
An anonymous couple found a pot of 260 gold coins while renovating their Yorkshire home. The coins sold at auction earlier this year for £754,000.
Courtesy of Spink
The next weekend, the couple met Gregory Edmund, a specialist with coin assessor Spink & Son, in the back room of a hotel near their home.
“They started dumping coins into my hand, ”Edmund said. “It was 17th-century gold, which is not something you get often, even as an auctioneer.”
The coins were dated between 1610 and 1727, and included a rare George I guinea from 1720 featuring two rails sides, as well as a rare Brazilian coin that circulated in England in the early 18th century. Edmund’s team determined that the trove originally belonged to the Fernley-Maisters family, who were involved in Baltic trading. Edmund suspects that the family may have been skeptical of banks and the economy, and decided to keep their money buried within their home, located just underneath a doorway of the original structure.
“It’s remarkable that for 300 years, almost no one had discovered it even though it was the main access way through the house,” Edmund said.
That law stipulates that anyone finding a “horde” of coins must declare their discovery with the government. Typically, any collection of two or more coins, as long as they’re at least 300 years old when found, may count as treasure, in which case the government can provide a reward equivalent to its market value.
In the case of the Yorkshire couple, the government decided to disclaim their find, allowing them to do with the coins what they liked. Originally estimated to be worth £250,000 (US$317,408), the coins sold at auction in September for £754,000.
Edmund’s firm gets at least a few inquiries each year from people discovering valuable objects in their home.
“People will claim to have found old coins behind a fireplace, a windowsill, or things of that nature,” he said. “There’s this sort of spiritual connection with burying things in houses, either to keep away witches, or just because… up until a couple of hundred years ago, people didn’t have banks.”
A Hidden Time Capsule
Others are finding objects of more sentimental than monetary value.
Last year, painter Scott Bevan, 43, was enlisted by his sister, Deborah Phillips, 52, to help with some work around the 1960s Birmingham house she had just bought.
His first task: Remove an old brick fireplace.
As he started to knock down the bricks, he noticed a cavity filled with paper debris. From it, he pulled out a cylindrical wrapped parcel.
Scott Bevan came across two time capsules dating from 1969 and 1988 while he was knocking down a fireplace in his sister’s home.
Scott Bevan/Deborah Phillips
“Straightaway, I thought, that’s deliberate that that’s been placed there,” Mr. Bevan said.
Inside the parcel, Bevan and Phillips found a Birmingham Evening Mail newspaper from 1969, as well as a black-and-white photograph of a woman, who they later discovered to be Ethel Wright, who had previously owned the home with her husband, Harold.
The time capsule contained copies of the Birmingham Evening Mail, as well as a letter.
Scott Bevan/Deborah Phillips
Not long after they’d discovered the first time capsule, Bevan located a second, this time on the other side of the fireplace. This one contained yet another newspaper, from 1988, and a letter from the Wrights.
“We wish you lots of happiness and good luck in your new home,” the note read. “We came here [sic] end of May 1967, it was then newly built and we have found contentment and security in these four walls.”
Bevan and his sister shared what the Wrights had written with their son, who had maintained the house before Phillips bought it.
“They knew that when somebody found that, they’d be gone,” Bevan said of the Wrights.
Bevan, who enjoys metal detecting in his free time, loves making historical finds. Although the capsules weren’t his oldest find, they were among the more special, he said.
“It was lovely to find,” he said. “Everything has a story, doesn’t it?”
Source : MANSIONGLOBAL