The back cellar room
The two windows to this room were so rotten that when I got round to replacing them, the wooden frame and cross-members simply came away in my hand and the glass fell out. They must just have remained where they were through force of habit! The boiler here was oil-fired and was soon replaced by a less smelly gas-fired one.
The marks on the undersides of the ceiling joists can be clearly seen in this picture, showing that this room also had a plastered ceiling, though what its original purpose was is now a mystery. The "Belfast" sink in the corner and its plumbing all looked quite old: perhaps that was a clue? The floor, however, was just a very thin cement layer over compacted earth which could be poked through with a screwdriver, and there was a drain in the middle of the floor, leading presumably to a soak-away at the back of the house.
Another oddity in this room were two 1.5" iron pipes which protruded from the wall to the left of the boiler: they had been cut off, but later digging in the garden behind the garage revealed that their original purpose had been to heat a greenhouse whose foundations I found. It must have been a more substantial (coal fired?) boiler then.
This set of images © John Woodhouse, 2005
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