This week's discoveries at the old Victorian manor continue to baffle us.
We thought we knew how this house was built over time. Now we are completely uncertain after a few surprising finds.
It all started with what was going to be our kitchen and now will be our main art glass gallery in the southern portion of the west wing.
In the food cellar of this half of the house, we had noticed that the existing stairs hid a second stairway.
It was clear that at one time these stairs exited to the back of the house and into what was most recently our kitchen. Evidence of the top of this exit could be seen on the newly exposed brick wall.
However, we could not be sure of the layout without removing the floor. We were also interested in perhaps re-opening this doorway in an attempt to bring back the original configuration of the house.
In the end, we removed the floor and ended up with an amazing staircase leading into the cellar. Since we always wanted to equip the gallery with an espresso/wine bar, we've decided this would make the ideal passageway from the gallery to a new wine cellar.
What really created havoc however is when we removed the rest of the floor (four layers of it). We expected a consistent level of dirt in the entire room (our first opening showed the ground only a couple of inches from the kitchen floor). Instead we found a layered structure of stone, mortar and a well-defined stone foundation....all within one room!
Some of the intricate stone work is actually bound with wrought iron ties.
The inside of this room now looks like an archaeological dig, and we are completely at a loss to explain these structures. We have some theories, but Christine and I are now determined to go to the old town archives to see if we can learn more.
The odd discoveries did not end there. When looking at the construction of the house, the west wing which we thought was an addition to the main house shows that one wall was built within the main house....basically overlapping the west wall of the main house (ie. we have 6 layers of bricks all overlapping ... on an inside wall!).
I am having a difficult time explaining this, unless what we thought was an addition could have been the original beginning of the house. Given the newly discovered structures in the back (southerly) room, maybe this was the site of the original homestead (?).
When exposing the floor beams of the bathroom at this end of the house, the construction is amazing. We found these very sizable beams with tongue and groove which almost resemble a ship-building exercise.
Other interesting finds this week, included an old trap door leading to the cellar of the main house. This was oddly situated at the bricked-in back door. The local construction crew suggested this may have been used by the "underground railroad" which was known to exist in the area; we're just not sure since the two cellars themselves have a confusing configuration (there is evidence of additional cellar walls between the two).
We also found some old local newspapers from 1953 (makes for great reading).
For workers on the site, the most amusing find though was a psychedelic wallpaper discovered in the west wing bathroom. It really brings you back to the 60's and I can imagine this place being a great "hippie" hang out.
I hope they do survive our pruning. We are certainly not counting on apples this year, but we now expect to be able to "train" the branches to better produce fruit....only time will tell.
This exercise has created a lot of wood. Some of this we think will make great fire wood, but burning the rest may be a waste. We've decided we will try to process as much as we can through a wood chipper. After all our spring gardening effort will probably require quite a lot of mulch.
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