What the heck was that?!

I was recently looking at a peice of property for sale with my parents. Several acres with an old, old, old house and barn boarded up and falling down. I'm guessing the whole thing was built at least 100 years ago. It's been left abandoned for many many years.

Anyway, it was a beautiful peice of property, and in one corner there was a nice little creek, near that was the original hand dug well. On the other side of the creek was a little picnic area built a very long time ago out of stone, with a small fireplace type thing with an iron cooking(?) surface.

A few feet beside that is something that looks a little more ominous to me. It was a large hand made stone lined "hole" into the side of a hill, about, say, the size of a body. There was an old steel door falling off it's hinges and part of some gas pipe pointing inside, and a collapsed chimney in the back. Hard to see a lot of it due to overgrowth around it. Probably hasn't been used in 50 years, but that begs the question what was it used for? If you can see what I might be getting at...

Let's just say after I saw it I went from thinking "wow this is a nice peice of property" to "ok, I've seen enough, let's go". The price was surprisingly low, too. :thinking:

Sounds kinda fun :devil: In all seriousness though, maybe some sort of storm shelter/fallout shelter/earth cellar? Might be fun to go peeking around a little more and see what it was.

BatteryCharger said:

If you can see what I might be getting at...

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No I don't. But phaserburn's fanclub should have some great ideas.

No picture, I take it.

I'd say some sort of oven.
Norm

BatteryCharger said:

If you can see what I might be getting at...

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I'm not sure if I follow. Are you thinking of some sort of giant oven for baking people?

I agree, sounds like an old pottery oven......

cheapbastard said:

I'm not sure if I follow. Are you thinking of some sort of giant oven for baking people?

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Let me just put it this way - a coffin would fit in there PERFECTLY. :duh2: It was just all entirely weird, I've never seen anything like it before.

I'll take some pics if we go back...

BatteryCharger said:

Let me just put it this way - a coffin would fit in there PERFECTLY. :duh2: It was just all entirely weird,

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That's a pretty strange association if you ask me. I've seen a gazillion things that a coffin would fit in but my first thought is rarely that a coffin would fit in them.

BatteryCharger said:

I've never seen anything like it before....

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whilst that may well be true it doesn't automatically follow that what you've seen this time is in any way sinister.

I'm thinking food, fur or skins, cooked/dried/stored.

A big clue here is the creak. In human development, rivers play two major roles, taking stuff out (water/food) and putting stuff in (waste). In the first case, it would be a processing facility for fish, in the second, a processing facility for game. Is the creak large enough for significant fishing (imagine it fully stocked)? Is the site upstream or downstream from the well? Are the facilities larger than would be needed by a single family for food?

Maybe a place to store ice. Where did they store ice 100 years ago?

bladerunner said:

Maybe a place to store ice. Where did they store ice 100 years ago?

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In an IceHouse.
Norm

Norm said:

I'd say some sort of oven.
Norm

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yep, maybe an inbuilt Italian Fourno.

my first instinct is that it is a oven of sorts.

dugged into ground (works sort of insulation and foundation.. dont need to use cement on the tiles and bricks)

hmm the piping could be for feeding air into the flames. or to duct smoke in or out. (kinda like a smoking oven.. without seeing it its hard to say)

size, it must be big enough for cooking half or full cow/deer/lamb/pig etc.



---could also be some kind of heated bathtub

Maybe it's another pumphouse!

Sounds like a smoker to me.

If the price was right I would not pass it up for the wrong reason. They would hardly have a picnic area for some of the nefarious ideas being presented.

A picture would really help.

ElectronGuru said:

I'm thinking food, fur or skins, cooked/dried/stored.

A big clue here is the creak. In human development, rivers play two major roles, taking stuff out (water/food) and putting stuff in (waste). In the first case, it would be a processing facility for fish, in the second, a processing facility for game. Is the creak large enough for significant fishing (imagine it fully stocked)? Is the site upstream or downstream from the well? Are the facilities larger than would be needed by a single family for food?

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That's why i suggested it could be for baking pottery! Creak --> clay --> heat --> pottery!!! Or something more simple, like bricks or roofing tiles.

and bulldozers or dynamite make ugly things if not disappear.. atleast remodeled to resemble their previous selves lot less.

one weird thing that can be easily fixed should not intervene in purchase.

something creepy is always a cool thing in old estates.

odd or bad neighbours are totally different thing. stay away from those.

always go and see the neighbours etc before you buy. just to get a feel of them. and if they are friendly folk you will very quickly learn alot of the property and people around you.

always look what it looks now. then imagine how much it takes work to look the way you want it to look. do some cost analysis.

ughh.... Creepy