Uncovered anything interesting when developing a house?

[KGeeson]

I've been on 2 development projects (one for an investment company and one for family) that have uncovered some weird and wonderful surprises. The first one, was developing an old property in a market town into flats, and we found a deep well in the (what was to be) kitchen! They decided to turn it into a feature within the kitchen floor, with internals lights and a glass top so you could walk over it! Very unusual.

The second one was the renovation of a very old period cottage on the coast, and my family discovered there was actually a hidden room (entirely bricked in, no door entrance or windows). It appeared to be some sort of bakery room but quite strange!

Anyone else had some strange / wonderful discoveries?!

 

[Nicholas Wallwork]

Wow those are very interesting finds!

I've not found anything quite so unusual but I did find 2 basements in our last development which we will develop into kitchens freeing up the ground floor rooms into lettable bedrooms and thus increasing the profit on the building by around £1,400pm... Can't argue with that!

 

[Nicholas Wallwork]

I also met a guy last week who found a whole swimming pool underneath the rear "mews house" extension at the rear of his property, a previous owner had just built over it with floor joists and a suspended floor... Now it's an amazing split level cinema room! Pretty cool...

 

[KGeeson]

Wow those are very interesting finds!

I've not found anything quite so unusual but I did find 2 basements in our last development which we will develop into kitchens freeing up the ground floor rooms into lettable bedrooms and thus increasing the profit on the building by around £1,400pm... Can't argue with that!

Wow! So there was no details of these on plans etc? How bizarre! (But what a bonus!

 

[Nicholas Wallwork]

Yup none at all, what seemed insignificant to the seller was a massive benefit to us and actually made the property more valuable...

Goes to show what is someone else's trash...

 

[PropEx]

I did read the other week that a guy in Florida(Miami, I think) was flattening the property he bought to build another property. While it was being demolished he found a safe vault in the foundations. It is even more interesting, considering the previous owner of the property was none other than Pablo Escobar! I haven't heard what the outcome was as I'm sure there will be some red tape to get through, but one would imagine there would be a pretty penny inside it. At the peak of his "powers" Pablo was spending $2,000 on elastic bands a month to keep his money(according to some book I read)!

In fact, I have just found a link to the story http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article56514733.html

 

[nmb]

Back in my hometown village there was always a rumour that one of the pubs had a tunnel which went for about 2 or 3 miles to a castle over on the other side of the river. Everybody said that the tunnel was now blocked in because it contained poisonous gases. I never got to the bottom of the story!

 

[michael1978]

My brother does constructions and renovations and he found lots of jewelry, gold, diamonds.. He returned it to the owner and the owner did not even know about it.

 

[diyhelp]

There is a pub in the town where I come from which has an underground tunnel leading for a good 2 or 3 miles to a local castle (even goes under the river!). It hasnt been opened for years because of the risk of toxic gas but that always fascinated me.