The Cellar - In Your Yard, Underground

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In Your Yard, Underground

Something I read on another forum got me thinking about this - I've thought about it before, too - ever wonder what is in your yard, underground?

Naturally this varies depending on the age of your home, what was there before the house was built, etc. Could be all kinds of trash, a filled-in outhouse pit, dead pet skeletons, a box of money someone hid and forgot where they put it...you never know!

By the way, there are people who go around digging up outhouse pits in the name of archaeology/antique hunting....lots of old bottles and who knows what else. :thepain:

I have a metal detector, a cheap one...I've gone around our yard a bit, but never found anything but a rivet and a radio knob. Every now and then we'll dig up stuff like a broken Hot Wheel or plastic army man.

Of course, sometimes you probably don't wanna know what's there.

Anybody think about this, or find anything interesting?

My property is mostly fill brought in after a major flood ripped through here in the early 70s. I've unearthed all kinds of strange stuff.
Oh, there's also the foundation for a woolen mill that stood here in late 1700s and 1800s.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juniper (Post 475367)

Every now and then we'll dig up stuff like a broken Hot Wheel or plastic army man.

I recently found a couple of old plastic soldiers -- one was missing most of his lower leg so I guess he'd hit a land mine. But I was auguring a hole for the base of a new deck when I hit the base of either the original deck (~1963) or for some outbuilding (~1900) at about 18 inches down. It still had a bit of the redwood 4X4 in it. So it was a little weird to hit it dead center but it ended up being a great foundation piece for the new deck. After I pulled the old 4X4 out of it, it left perfect 'keyhole' to tie the new base to the old.

When we were removing the above-ground pool from our backyard at the old house, we were having the damnedest time getting one last piece of metal frame out of the ground. We dug, and dug, and fought the thing for several days, before finally we got down to the cement plug. (All the others had come loose from their plugs long before we even tried to remove them.) Still we couldn't get it loose, so we began to dig outward to find the edge of the plug and just dig the whole damn thing out. And we dug... and dug... And as it turned out, it was not a plug at all, but one huge concrete ring that went around the entire yard where the pool had been.

Then we called in the demolition company. Should have done that from day freaking one.

There's nothin gin my parents' yard. My niece and nephew did a Big Dig squre there a while back. Big TV thing where people were encouraged to dig 1m x 1m x 1m on their land. My sister flatly refused to have it done in her garden (fair enough I suppose) but agreed when Mum offered.

The big finds always seem to be on farmland or in the grounds of huge houses - valuable land has always been valuable. The ground they built council estates on in the 60s was cheap for a reason.

Fascinating topic though. I still intend to do a Thames Beachcombing walk one of these days. You can bet your life I'll document it for you :)

Quote:

Thames Beachcombing

The Beachcombing walks are "special" in every way. (And I'm speaking from first hand experience...because I've been on three or four of them myself. Talk about a busman's holiday!) Let me count the ways. First of all: wonderful guide. Which is always - always - the most important factor. The foreshore - the "beachcombing" - walks are guided by Mike W. He's the former Museum of London Marine Archaeologist, so - needless to say - he really knows his stuff. But he's the rest of the package too. He's a really nice guy - warm, friendly, enthusiastic, great with kids...the whole kit and caboodle.

What do you do on a Beachcombing walk? Well, there are several elements. Mike often kicks off with fascinating stuff on marine wildlife. And needless to say, he knows where to look and what to look for. So you see critters! And some of their life stories - the Thames eel for example - are, well, just extraordinary. Theirs is a biography that almost beggars belief: they start out in the Sargasso sea - tiny little thread-like creatures - make their way across the Atlantic, up the Thames, do what they have to do - by this time they're a good size - picture a couple of feet or so of a garden hose and you'll get the idea - and then, well, it's time to turn round and head back across the Atlantic, head home to die (providing, that is, they don't get sidetracked - so to speak - into a Cockney eel and pie establishment)...well, you'll get my drift.

Then after fin, feather, fur, fauna, scale, etc. he will usually move on to the human "footprint" on the foreshore. Some of it small enough that you can pick up, examine, put in your pocket, take home and put on your mantlepiece (or, in the case of the mediaeval roof tiles - use for candle holders!). Some of it way too big to take home. Revetments, foundations, supports, fragments of quays...that sort of thing. Stuff that you and I almost certainly wouldn't even notice...or if we did notice we wouldn't have a clue what is was for, how old it was, etc.

We have planted numerous small dead animals in various yards over the years.

did that ever result in a new animal growing there?

One time when I was little, after a tornado had passed through, I was digging in the mud and pulled out a crawdad. Scared the hell outta me. Can't say I've ever found anything else of interest under our yard, but I know for sure several pets have been buried in the back field for future residents to find. Its kinda sad to think about actually, that they won't know about them or care. I hope Natasha, Bobette, Jack, Eric, Brownie, Muttlie, Pooch and Bitsy haunt them for desecrating their graves.