Hidden treasures

I thought I would share a secret treasure trove we found in our own house. Our lovely terrace house was built in 1912. The layout is completely original except for the loft conversion. We recently renovated the void under the stairs to give us some much needed storage. When the builder was pulling off the old tongue and groove wooden boards he uncovered a time capsule of ancient household items which had been boarded up and forgotten.

The contents were seemingly quite random. The largest item was an old tin trunk but there were also picture frames, food tins and even a hand-written spelling test by Marjorie Carss. The curator in me was very over-excited and we went through every item one by one, trying to identify what everything was.

We identified stone hot water bottles, gas fittings, old radio speakers, a meat mincer, metal corset stays, sweet tins, biscuit tins, religious prints, black and white photographs of children and soldiers, and a full tin of LACTA milk formula.

Where possible we re-used some of the items. The picture frames were cleaned up, broken glass was replaced and they now hang (with our own photographs) in our lounge. The wooden boxes display some of my crafty pieces around the house and the photographs have been put in acid-free sleeves in case the local museum want them.

We couldn’t understand why so many items had been dumped under the stairs and boarded up. They seem to date from the 1920-60s so perhaps someone died and they had a clear out or items were collected for the rag and bone man who never knocked.

I didn’t buy any of the vintage finds as I was lucky enough to find them under my nose and so I’m linking up with Flea Market Finds, Magpie Monday and Thrift Share Monday – please follow the links for more lovely vintage discoveries.