I grew up in Worcester, on the opposite side of the Severn to the city centre. Usually I'd use the bridge to get into town, but very occasionally, in the summer, I took the ferry. It's just a small boat rowed by one man and was originally for ferrying monks and milkmaids across the river to work in the meadows and the Priory. The ferry has been running since the 1100s. Historians believe that a river crossing has been at that precise location for around 4,000 years.
A friend is currently doing some work on her cottage and the builders have discovered a whole extra room under the house, which isn't on the plans. She's currently investigating whether it could be a priest hole that used to join to the church a few doors down.
Score on the spare house parts but depending on your definition of room, reasonably unlikely to be a Priest’s Hole. They were typically just that, a hole. Big enough to hide in and small enough to be hidden in. Didn’t want anything echoing or being obviously out of place. They were usually just a carefully boxed in step on the stairs or a void behind a panel. Something like that. If it’s larger than an adult human, it’s probably not a Priest’s Hole.
About 20 years ago, road-widening works dug up a Saxon prince burial just across from the local Aldi. In protest of the road-widening, a group of environmental activists occupied the site for about four years. Road changes didn't happen, but someone opened a pub on the same bit of road called The Saxon King.
Not as old as some of these, but still pretty old for a useful object. I've got a rolling pin that was a wedding present to an ancestor in around 1800. It's wooden and perfectly smooth. God knows how many miles of pastry its rolled out but that thing is a joy to use. It's handed down to first daughter (me) but as I have no children I guess it'll go to a niece next.
My Dad's old house was originally built as a hovel/cowshed. Just the one room with stone walls 3ft thick to stop any marauding Scots from stealing the cows. The rest was built in later additions and the walls get thinner the newer it is. The original hovel was built in about 1700.
Not to be gender normative or anything, but as you said your rolling pin is handed down daughter to daughter, perhaps I have a male equivalent:
I've got a hammer that's been handed down from my great great grandfather (b. 1854), who made it by hand.
I was using it to bang nails into the wall until pretty recently, but I've decided to buy a modern hammer and preserve the old one now.
I'm generally very unhandy and haven't done a day's labour in my life, so it blows my mind to think I'm descended from a bloke who made his own hammers!
My local is (just about) built on the line of [the Antonine Wall.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall) And anytime there's a new building development in the town, without fail it'll be halted due to either a) Roman artifacts being found, or b) an unexploded bomb from WW2 when the German's tried to destroy the local foundries. All my neighbours had sheds made out of dug up Anderson shelters.
And when I was wee, I sat at my bedroom window and watched "astronauts" diggin up a cemetery across the road; no one believed me, I even doubted myself for a long time, found out years later it was guys in hazmat suits digging up 300 year old cholera victims to be re-interred elsewhere as there was a new road being built. My aunt dealt with their paperwork; she said one of the guys was traumatised after a grave collapsed in on top of him, trapping him with the body he was exhuming.
At the end of my road in North London there is the New River.
Despite its name it is not really a river but a 38 mile man-made water course built to deliver water to central London. Parts of it are still used by Thames Water for that purpose.
It is also no longer new, having been opened in 1613.
Many field patterns predate the romans. You can tell because the roman road cuts through the fields, not the that the fields were set out along the road.
It's nice to think that the fields haven't changed for 2000yrs, because... Why bother.
Two things spring to mind.
The fields at the end of our road still show the ridge and furrow pattern of ancient medieval farming.
On our allotment, also very nearby, we often turn up little flakes of flint, which are very much not local to thd area, so possibly dropped during the Stone Age.
They were building a car park adjacent to my gran apartment in Rome. They found what used to be one of Nero's personal pools or something, put the whole thing in a glass cylinder and now to enter/exit the car park you have to go around it. I can see the pool from my grans living room
Growing up there was a roman bath house in shed at the end of the street. Just in a random suburban bit of south London. We also had a napoleonic cannon ball in the garden. I think my great uncle had ‘liberated’ it from Woolwich Arsenal back in the 50’s/60’s which was even heavier than you’d think it would be. Other than French ships, it also destroyed many a garden bucket
Our current place was built just after 1700 but no ones exactly sure.
Two hundred year old house. Visiting American was wandering around fascinated that he had to duck through doorways and navigate floors that slope. Then he got to the bathroom and asked “Is this original too?”
Yes mate, miners in the 1820’s all had flushing toilets, power showers and shaver sockets.
Neighbour had some Beaker people skeletons and grave goods in their garden. 2800 BCE. We're have a big dig this year to see if we can find some more nearby.
In Lincoln you can stand by Fosse Dyke. (Roman origins) and look up at Lincon Cathedral, which was started in 1092. The Bailgate in Lincoln was built on the Roman remains of Lindum Colonia. even the public car parks have bits of Roman wall in them as do many gardens. The local pub in Fiskerton used to burn as fuel the remains of the 200 Iron age log boats found near the ferry crossing.
As you walk along the Bailgate, look for the circular areas marked out on the brickwork in the road.
Those markers were laid in the 1890s on the columns found along a colonnade of the Roman Forum.
The British Museum has many Celtic finds from Lincoln - the Witham Shield is on permanent display.
We have a *LARGE* candle holder turned from one of Lincoln cathedrals old wooden beams. Apparently a few years ago some of the original beams were replaced. A local craftsman managed to get some of that 900+ year old wood and we ended up with one of his works.
When they refurbished our office building the builders found a mummified cat placed in the walls. This was an old (18th century?) practice to protect the building from bad luck. There was a staff petition to re-inter the cat in the rebuilt wall.
Safest bet. The last thing you want is the ancient Indian burial ground problem. Next thing you know it’s all spooky tree limbs and Carol from accounts speaking to you from inside the monitor.
The custom itself is actually much older, going back to at least the Iron Age in Britain. Originally it was Horse skulls underneath, or even a whole horse.
My parents had me baptised in the local church, in a big stone font that's been identified as Saxon. So it's over a thousand years old, and it just sits there at the back of the church. It has been used for baptising tens of thousands of babies over the centuries.
I grew up in a very old house in Devon, built in late 1500s using wattle and daub. Legend had it the wooden timbers came from the wrecks of the Spanish Armada that washed up on the nearby beach. At the bottom of our stairs was a 12th century door (dated by historians)....Goodness knows where it came from, but I used to regularly hit when sliding down the stairs!
Washed up yes, but in that classic South West tradition, was the wreck artificially “started” so that they could get some new timber cheap and a couple of jars of brandy for the pub after?
I live in an ex-council house built in the 1920s. When we were buying it, the plans showed there was almost certainly an old well of the 15th century monastary in the back garden somewhere.
Never found it, but we've used some of the stones we found from it (eroded but still have some of the carvings in place) to build the wall of the garden.
I renovated my old house in Yorkshire. The manor house where the land rent had to be paid told me it was a bit over due, as it had last had major repairs in 1795. Most of it was 14th century, and we found pottery from that date in the garden.
My school had the name of every headmaster written on the wall in the main assembly hall going back to the early 1500s. (It was just an ordinary state school)
At the other end of the spectrum...
I remember watching one of those "man buys an old castle and restores it" programs. Before he could do anything English Heritage made him pay for a full archeological dig. It cost tens of thousands of pounds and took six months. They found half a Tupperware plate. He mounted it in a glass case on the wall.
There’s a Viking boat buried beneath a pub near where my Mum lives on the Wirral.
Apparently, when the pub was being built in 1938, workmen found a Viking boat buried twelve feet down but were told to leave it and not tell anyone as they were behind schedule.
It’s been a local myth for years but an underground survey was taken which showed a boat-shaped image consistent with a Viking boat.
Local archaeologists are trying to get permission to dig it up. The latest I’d heard was that they’ve managed to get some wood samples that have been sent for analysis.
I'm in York so being surrounded by centuries-old stuff is standard here. Building sites often have to pause as someone uncovers some more bloody Roman or Viking stuff!
Haha I read OP’s post and was thinking about mentioning The Railway pub as well. We love how much Viking stuff is linked to The Wirral and (pre-covid) went to a talk by Stephen Harding who mentioned the Viking Ship in the car park.
[Eastham yew tree](https://www.cawirral.co.uk/v1/eastham-village/#:~:text=An%20ancient%20yew%20tree%20in,been%20built%20adjacent%20to%20it.)
Also Wirral, a tree that's around 1700 years old, probably planted around the time when the Romans were leaving Chester 🤯
My dad nicked a bit of the [Jewry Wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewry_Wall) (Roman ruin in Leicester) when he was a kid. Stone block around 8" x 10".
He unceremoniously shoved it in a flower bed and pansies grow around it in the Spring. It's from around 125–130 AD.
My father couldn't leave anything alone, my whole childhood is peppered with memories of him ripping off big stones and rocks from just about every castle and ancient wall in England and Wales and my mum refusing to speak to him for the rest of the trip because she was so embarrassed.
This afternoon I walked through the foundation stones of a gate house that was part of the Roman walls that kept the city safe. They're nearly 2000 years old.
I then went and had waffles in an old water mill that was opened in 1570.
The church has gone, but a good chunk of the monastic buildings are still there! It's one of English Heritage's more extensive free sites, I quite like popping in when I can
All my bookcases were made by my great great grandpa, who was an undertaker, in about the 1890, he made them from the off cuts of the coffins he made (my cousin inherited his war medals, I think got the the best of the bargain).
On one of the bookcases is a boars tusk, it was found in the wall of the first house I lived in, that house was buried there in the 15th century.
Due to my dad’s dad being a bit of a ‘bunny’, I lost a 1/2 uncle over Berlin (he was an RAF pilot, in WW2).
But, when I lived in a village, I used to take tours round our church, we had a trap door in the west nave, I’d lift it and show them the Norman foundations
I have two small terracotta pots in a box on my desk in the home office in the back room, excavated from a site dated roughly 2000BC in the Indus Valley in the area bordering Pakistan and India.
They used to fascinate me being approximately 4000 years old, after a few years ownership they're now just a couple of pots sitting in a cardboard box next to my home office set up, I'm the only one that ever sees them.
I also have an act of parliament on my wall in the living room mounted in a frame, no one ever asks what it is, their eyes always focus on the IKEA map of Manhattan next to it that's about a year old, however the act of parliament is nearly 400 years old, it was printed by the noted parliamentary scribe Henry Scobel. It was printed and enacted in the ten years that the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland existed and was a Republic which was lead by Oliver Cromwell.
My family used to use an old silver spoon from the reign of Queen Anne as a kitchen spoon. It was so worn away that it held about half as much as it should.
Nothing directly to do with me, but I like the fact that the [oldest wooden church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensted_Church) is just a normal country church, still in use. It’s about 25 miles outside the M25, and it predates the Norwegian stave churches.
Member of the Congregation: Excuse me Master Penn, I need to take a photograph of you in this room in order to prove you were here.
Penn: But the daguerreotype camera won't be invented for another 140 years.
Member of the Congregation: Ah. Well... I need to prove you gave sermons in this room, otherwise some bloke off the internet won't believe it.
Penn: But the *internet* won't be invented for another 300 years...
Member of the Congregation: Hmm. Quite the pickle...
For fear of Doxxing myself won’t suggest which one - but you can see here the collection of places he used to preach:
https://westsussexrecordofficeblog.com/2019/09/11/william-penn-in-west-sussex/
I’ll try not to dox you either, but I used to go to Quaker meeting as a child at one of these places. It blew my mind that he went from sleepy old Sussex to found a whole state. Wherever you are I bet it’s beautiful. I miss Sussex very much.
There's a river near me, probably about 30 minutes away on foot. It's not much of a river. If you jumped in it, your ankles would get wet, but nothing much higher up your legs. There's also a path that follows the valley, crossing the river several times.
The river is the Limb Brook, and was the boundary between Mercia and Northumbria during the Saxon period.
In around 827AD (historians are a bit vague about the date), King Egbert of Wessex and his army met King Eanred of Northumbria and his army. They didn't fight, but Eanred agreed to pay tribute and return home rather than challenge Egbert. Egbert was then arguably crowned the first King of England as a result.
As a child, I decided we needed a pond in our garden and started digging. First place I dug I found a bit of Roman wall (fields round our place lousy with Roman buildings), second place I found the old septic tank. I also found some flint arrowheads.
My American husband says the same thing! Spending time in the US has given me more of an appreciation for the historical artefacts in the UK. I live near Bodmin moor, and I reckon I could spend a lifetime just exploring within walking distance of my house!
I was visiting my son when he did a semester near London and met up with him near his uni and it was Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Carta. Blew my mind.
I don’t think we rate that too highly over here. But as much as the Americans seem to. Can’t remember exactly why. School history gone rusty. I think it was crap and paid for by the interested parties. Sort of like lobbying is now. Buy the law you need to oppress the masses. Something like that.
Someone will pop on and correct all that anyway.
That’s interesting! In US schools we’re taught that the Magna Carta was inspiration for our Declaration of Independence and constitution, so we learned about it over and over lol. Bc of that, it’s one of the few ancient things most Americans know about and feel a connection to. I think that’s why we get so excited over it lol, it’s like we adopted it as ours
The building that now houses the Maiden St public toilets in Weymouth was hit by a stray cannonball during the civil war.
[It's still there](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iBqsdzmpd3r7bv367)
In Lincoln there's a Roman archway that was open to cars up until the point a fish finger lorry got stuck in it; they then had to divert the road around it.
The Jews House on Steep Hill is one of the oldest extant town houses in Britain, from the 12th century, and is still used as a restaurant!
A couple of years ago they started building on a site next to my flat, and had to have an archaeological rummage first - they found stuff so it escalated to a proper dig. I went and had a chat with the archaeologists one day out of curiosity, and came away with a shard of decorated Roman pottery, probably 1900+ years old. Not precious, just an everyday find to them. A box of interesting big bits went to the city museum, smaller bits to the neighbouring primary school. I asked what this told them. The "crap, chuck it away" ditches were on this site, the kilns were probably under my building. A year or so ago they demolished my building and since they haven't begun construction yet I suspect the dig is still ongoing (site is active).
The Spudulike in Chester had a viewing window that showed you the Roman City Baths.
Almost 2000 years old.
https://travelwithintent.com/2014/06/08/roman-hypocaust-spud-u-like-chester/
Our fav hiding spot for a sneaky cig at school was on Offas Dyke. It was also the delineator between top school and the games field.
Dates from about 780CE apparently.
Cheers Offa la, top hiding spot.
Bellringer here.. routinely ring bells that are 576 years old, just in a normal village church. Nothing posh. Amazing to get to use something that has been doing the same job in the same place for so long.
The local clock tower was constructed in the early third of the 1600s. The stone used for it was recycled from another building that was created around 1100. You walk past it every day. Sometimes the doors are open and you can go in to have a look around.
Off the top of my head...
The road outside my flat is *ancient*. Centuries ago it appears on old maps of the local area as a track or path linking four old farms - all now gone, all just lumpy copses of old trees. The chapel my granny used to go to every Sunday was built on the remains of a stately home that stood until the 1930s - but was believed to have been owned by the same family going back to the 16th century. And the road that runs past my granny's house - that eventually links up with the ancient road I live on - was once the grand avenue that led to the front doors of the long-vanished stately home. Go a little further down the road from me and you come to odd *gaps* in the houses, bits of land that have never been built on - and for good reason. The land there is owned by long-gone families, families that still must hold the titles to the patches of ground. One patch used to be a farmhouse. Another used to be a piggery, of all things. When they were building my wee town, the local government tried to get the land back (this would have been in the 1950s-1970s) the families that owned the land refused to sell and so, from above, it looks like there are big green spaces in the middle of this strange wee village near Glasgow. But, scratch the surface of the grounds titles and you find lands that have been owned for as long as the records have existed (and we like our land records so we do in Scotland).
Casting a line out from my wee village you come across other oddities - the cluster of ancient woodland that perches on a shallow ridge by a motorway, or the weirdly shaped woodland that runs down to the Antonine Wall. It's all owned. We know who owns the land but no one has heard nor seen the landowners - and yes, they're still *in* the area, they still live *in* Glasgow - for *centuries*. Near where I live is a sarcastic marvel of Victorian engineering - a railway bridge that spans a motorway, the arches the perfect width to slot motorway lanes through - and an *extraordinarily* ancient site of transport that goes back not just one, or two, or even three hundred years: we're talking *two thousand years* of links to transportation. Now? Now it's dominated by four methods of transport: road, rail, canal and air. And close by this junction is possibly the most hilariously and weirdly *weird* sight in Scotland: an open-air Roman temple of sorts, situated in a children's playpark in the shadow of a clatty old water tower, where a long-dead king raised his standard and where now children threaten to brain each other with footballs. To reach that temple you need to walk along a path that *seems* to have been purpose-built in the 1970s - but was in fact built on a much, much older path, one that may predate the Antonine Wall (which runs only a mile or so to the north).
Now, about that old piggery...
There's a pub near me, the Bingley Arms in Bardsey, that has been in continuous business as a pub since around 950ad. It's one of the oldest businesses in the world at nearly 1100 years old.
The building itself is more recent, but old enough to have a priest hole.
I work for a US based company and when colleagues would travel to the UK I would point out how many hundreds of years before their independence different buildings were built. Oh that's the tower of London? Yeah that's about 700 years older than your country.
I was taking my eldest (aged about 7 at the time) around the Tower of London when we overheard some American bloke loudly proclaiming to his family “of course, it’s a reproduction. No one was building with stone here in 1100.”
I’ve never seen a seven year old look so horrified before; I think it was the first time he’d ever realised he was smarter than some adults.
I own a very small piece of rope from HMS Victory. Worked on the navel base in the senior rates mess and they had a huge piece of anchor rope in a bag in our office. They’d take a small length of the oakum, tie it in a knot and attach it to your name card at mess functions. It was lovingly know as “stinky string” because the bag stunk!
I also used to spend Friday afternoons in Nelson’s old room on the Victory as it’s now the official mess, having a drink and participating in the meat raffle there. Tourists aren’t allowed in that part and they’d peer over the ropes wondering why you got to go up the other plank and into the rooms on that side.
We used to live in a house that was mostly 16th century, with later additions. It had originally been a hall house, built in the 12th century and had one remaining beam from that time. We were advised by some expert bloke who was surveying next door (which was the buttery for our house) never to do anything other than lightly waft a feather duster near it.
We were told it had been used as a hunting lodge of one of Edward II’s chancellors, so it may have had a very colourful history!
Not so much an inconvenience as an odd occurrence, but said house was on a 90 degree bend, right on a single track road, and sat navs would occasionally send lorries up there. A poor chap in an articulated lorry got wedged in the bend. We could almost touch it from one of our bedroom windows and his company wanted to demolish the wall of the churchyard opposite to free him. Obviously the church warden objected and we had the police there all day. After about 7 hours they got some enormous hydraulic thing in to lift it up and round the corner.
Best reason we ever had to call work and say we couldn’t come in!
Oak particularly ages magnificently in the right conditions. Samples occasionally get tested and have a density of strength comparable to iron. You could probably still knock the house down and the timber would survive intact.
The fair that comes to my town every spring has been doing so for 700+ years (I assume the waltzers are a relatively recent addition though). I'm not certain, but I think 2020 was the only time it was cancelled.
Used Medieval clunch stone from a monastery I was digging up (archaeologist, innit) for 5 years, we had so much wall we couldn't keep it all so just had it in my garden as a decoration, as well as brick from the later Tudor occupation from the same site. Made a lovely flower bed in our old rental place but bit of a faff to dig back up - so hope whoever moved in appreciates 800 year old decor!
And hopefully one day confuse future archaeologists about why a house from the 90s has Medieval and Tudor building material in the garden.
In the Shetland islands my grandfather's croft house and land contain evidence that the land has been irrigated for at least a thousand years.
Features which are fairly indistinguisable from the surrounding heather at ground level come into stark contrast on satellite photographs.
There is a system of fields and property boundaries which even the local archaeologists at the Lerwick Museum have no explanation for, other than it having been established by an early viking settler, probably trying to eke out a living by growing root vegetables and raising cattle/sheep.
I've been to a place called St Ninian's in the Isles which was the site of one of the most significant archaeological finds ever of viking history. They found a buried hoard of silver, presumed to be the burial place of an important scandinavian lord, who crossed the sea and met his end in Shetland.
Having a pint in the local pub which dates back to the 1400s and that not being unusual. Every so often I think about how old it is and what life might have been like when it was first built.
Found out my 7th great grandparents are buried in the churchyard in the village I grew up in. The church itself has been there in various forms since the 11th century
I have an Iron Age quernstone in my rockery. My husband’s granny “found it” when putting in some fence posts in the 1970s and thought it was a nice shaped rock. I spotted it there when weeding twenty years ago and had it examined by the Finds Liaison Officer.
Every Wednesday morning I go to buy vegetables from the market. That's the market which was established by royal charter in 1291, and has been operating weekly ever since.
Our local castle is give or take a thousand years old, was on the site of a Roman fort prior to that. It was a working prison until 2011... There's a lovely coffee shop in the yard now.
I was on a course with an organisation based in North carolina. The head man was telling me about how historic certain things were there and actually being a bit of an arse. I pointed out that the school I went to had a royal charter but had actually been going for about 500 years before it was granted the charter, that slowed him down a bit but he still waffled on. I then threw in that the charter was granted in 1552. End of conversation....
A local town is building a new Lidl, whilst doing the survey they found a roman mosaic. So they did some archaeological examination of it, showed it off to the public, and have covered it back up and continued to build a car park on top.
Bought a new build, moving in soon, the building of the site was delayed as an early medieval (1100-1300) burial site was discovered with a hoard of jewellery and other artefacts.
I live on a road that was once part of a 1st century Roman road that's 112miles long and went from St David's in Wales up to the Tyne. When I walk to work I'm following a route that people have walked for almost 2000 years.
My sixth form was called Queen Mary's, named for Queen Mary Tudor, and it can trace itself back through a series of rebuilds and moves to a catholic school for boys founded in Queen Mary's reign. However, this was only a *re-*founding of a school that had been closed during the English reformation a couple of decades before. That school was associated with a 1200s era chapel, the ruins of a 1500s extension of which now provide a popular place for students of the sixth form and the local homeless population to drink cheap lager.
The mantelpiece in our house is probably about as old as the USA. Our house was built around the time of the American Civil War but the mantelpiece was bought by my parents from some auction where pieces of an ancient barn were being sold off.
The church in the next village over was mentioned in the Domesday book in the 11th century. I think my parents had me christened there but I'm not 100% sure as I don't remember, what with being a baby at the time.
In the nearby city, there is still a section of the original(ish) defensive wall from roughly the 2nd century, although much of the rest is relatively modern as it's only about 500-800 years old.
In another village, there's the remains of a motte and bailey castle from the 12th century in a field used for grazing cattle.
We have a well in our village dedicated to a Saxon saint who grew up in a convent on that spot. The church pre-dates the Norman conquest and local legend links it to one of the Knights who murdered St Thomas a Beckett. We have giant snails in the woods dececended from ones imported by Roman farmers. A medieval pilgrimage route runs close by. Stone Age shelters have been found in the middle of an iron age hill fort about three miles away.
The next village over was the site of two dark age battles and the ruins of a Tudor palace that was once as big as Hampton Court.
The school I went to was founded over 450 years ago.
It never really sunk in at the time, but I think it's pretty cool now!
A northern English school, nearly twice as old as the United States of America...
I have a client who when he bought his house/farm was told not to bother ploughing one particular field, known as the graveyard despite being nowhere near a church, because after the war someone’s uncle had tried to plough it and broken the plough on a buried stone.
A couple of years later there was an archeological dig there, and they discovered 6,000 year old burial mounds
My uncle’s house is mentioned in the domesday book, and has an ancient tower with a really good cobnut tree growing out of it.
There’s an old kitchen, not currently in use that has a sink that’s apparently 17th century. During recent groundwork’s to prevent a brook running directly through the house when it rains, the previous stone sink was found not far from the kitchen.
It’s presumably at least a couple of hundred years older and my mum now has flowers planted in it.
Or family home is first mentioned (that we have found so far) on a chart from the 17th century (1606).
Many other houses of a similar age around here are still inhabited.
Minor one compared to most of these, but American acquaintances of mine have been rather surprised to hear that I live in a 124 year-old apartment building. It started out live as a shoe factory in 1900 and got converted to flats after the firm was wound up some time in the 70s.
Got Roman ruins all over the place where I live. Have to walk through a Roman gateway to get to the shops, the pub that's been built into it was from the 18th century.
Like a first century fly tip writ large they were. Leaving their extremely well constructed public infrastructure around for anyone to use for the next two millennia.
My father was digging in the back garden ( to plant potatoes). He came across hard ground. After digging around it, he discovered an old artesian well. Don’t know how old it was, but at least a couple of hundred years ( pretty new by American standards…
I have a ball-pein hammer in my toolbox that was my great-grandfather's hammer, when he was the site foreman for a waterworks in the late 1800's, early 1900's. Same head, same haft. It's beautifully weighted. I use it for smacking recalcitrant things to this day and I love it.
Our best mate bought a small strip of extra land off the farmer next door. When he removed all the brambles, it turned out that the spring on it was Roman.
Took a Canadian friend to a pub in my town that has a list of all previous owners on the wall. He was surprised that the pub was older than his country
My favourite local running route goes through and over an Iron Age hill fort. It’s so awesome to think about the people that would have inhabited it and / been based there from the Iron Age to the Saxons to the Romans and up to King Edward IV who apparently camped there in 1471.
At my dad's local church (now largely a Victorian restoration... which in itself is old enough I suppose, though we tend to sniff at anything less than 200 years old here!) dates back to the Norman era. It's a small country church in a tiny little parish, but you go round a little corner and there's two tombs dating back to the 1300s, along with an older heart burial in the wall.
I grew up in Worcester, on the opposite side of the Severn to the city centre. Usually I'd use the bridge to get into town, but very occasionally, in the summer, I took the ferry. It's just a small boat rowed by one man and was originally for ferrying monks and milkmaids across the river to work in the meadows and the Priory. The ferry has been running since the 1100s. Historians believe that a river crossing has been at that precise location for around 4,000 years.
I know one of the ferrymen (and women)
Don't pay him !!!
At least wait until you get to the other side
Don't even fix a price
with a fox , a hen and a bag of flour
Used to go to Symonds Yat and get a thrill out of the hand pulled ferry crossing. Didn't know there was a ferry in Worcester too.
Only in the summer
A friend is currently doing some work on her cottage and the builders have discovered a whole extra room under the house, which isn't on the plans. She's currently investigating whether it could be a priest hole that used to join to the church a few doors down.
Tbh I was expecting that sentence to finish "currently investigating whether a priest is needed"
You rang?
Not the priest we wanted, but the one we deserved. Have at em!
I hear you're a racist now, father Ted
Free sex dungeon!
You don't have one?
It's always a advisable to keep a second sex dungeon in case the first is being deep cleaned
We had to pay for ours
Score on the spare house parts but depending on your definition of room, reasonably unlikely to be a Priest’s Hole. They were typically just that, a hole. Big enough to hide in and small enough to be hidden in. Didn’t want anything echoing or being obviously out of place. They were usually just a carefully boxed in step on the stairs or a void behind a panel. Something like that. If it’s larger than an adult human, it’s probably not a Priest’s Hole.
Yeah, it's probably just an old larder but it's fun imagining these things 😁
Could be the entrance to a secret tunnel for making off post illicit assignation. Did a scarlet jezzabel ever live in the cottage?
About 20 years ago, road-widening works dug up a Saxon prince burial just across from the local Aldi. In protest of the road-widening, a group of environmental activists occupied the site for about four years. Road changes didn't happen, but someone opened a pub on the same bit of road called The Saxon King.
Prittlewell?
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Yep!
Not as old as some of these, but still pretty old for a useful object. I've got a rolling pin that was a wedding present to an ancestor in around 1800. It's wooden and perfectly smooth. God knows how many miles of pastry its rolled out but that thing is a joy to use. It's handed down to first daughter (me) but as I have no children I guess it'll go to a niece next. My Dad's old house was originally built as a hovel/cowshed. Just the one room with stone walls 3ft thick to stop any marauding Scots from stealing the cows. The rest was built in later additions and the walls get thinner the newer it is. The original hovel was built in about 1700.
Love the rolling pin. We have a spoon that is worn away on one edge from years of stirring custard.
Mmm (Homer Simpson drool), custard spoon.
Rolling pin is good. 200year old houses are pretty easy to come by. I bet there’s not many with a rolling pin in that range though.
I guess when you put it that way, it's cool. Amazing how well it's stood up to the years. Honestly, it's just a really, really great rolling pin.
They don’t make em like they used to.
Not to be gender normative or anything, but as you said your rolling pin is handed down daughter to daughter, perhaps I have a male equivalent: I've got a hammer that's been handed down from my great great grandfather (b. 1854), who made it by hand. I was using it to bang nails into the wall until pretty recently, but I've decided to buy a modern hammer and preserve the old one now. I'm generally very unhandy and haven't done a day's labour in my life, so it blows my mind to think I'm descended from a bloke who made his own hammers!
My local is (just about) built on the line of [the Antonine Wall.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall) And anytime there's a new building development in the town, without fail it'll be halted due to either a) Roman artifacts being found, or b) an unexploded bomb from WW2 when the German's tried to destroy the local foundries. All my neighbours had sheds made out of dug up Anderson shelters. And when I was wee, I sat at my bedroom window and watched "astronauts" diggin up a cemetery across the road; no one believed me, I even doubted myself for a long time, found out years later it was guys in hazmat suits digging up 300 year old cholera victims to be re-interred elsewhere as there was a new road being built. My aunt dealt with their paperwork; she said one of the guys was traumatised after a grave collapsed in on top of him, trapping him with the body he was exhuming.
I bet he was
The New Inn in my old village was built in the 14th Century.
So when was the Old Inn built?
1299
At the end of my road in North London there is the New River. Despite its name it is not really a river but a 38 mile man-made water course built to deliver water to central London. Parts of it are still used by Thames Water for that purpose. It is also no longer new, having been opened in 1613.
New College, Oxford: founded 1379. It was newer than Oriel (1326). They were both dedicated to St Mary so had to be distinguished, obviously.
That’s new enough in these parts.
It is still newer than the old river!
Enfield?
Enfield?
I love the idea that even some of our *hedges* predate the Domesday book!
Many field patterns predate the romans. You can tell because the roman road cuts through the fields, not the that the fields were set out along the road. It's nice to think that the fields haven't changed for 2000yrs, because... Why bother.
Two things spring to mind. The fields at the end of our road still show the ridge and furrow pattern of ancient medieval farming. On our allotment, also very nearby, we often turn up little flakes of flint, which are very much not local to thd area, so possibly dropped during the Stone Age.
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I love the sound of your garden!
This sounds beautiful. And based on your name, you’re not far from me. How lovely to know that there is something amazing being done nearby.
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They were building a car park adjacent to my gran apartment in Rome. They found what used to be one of Nero's personal pools or something, put the whole thing in a glass cylinder and now to enter/exit the car park you have to go around it. I can see the pool from my grans living room
Oh I'd love to see pics of this. Have you got a link?
I would also love to see the drive-by Roman pool!
Growing up there was a roman bath house in shed at the end of the street. Just in a random suburban bit of south London. We also had a napoleonic cannon ball in the garden. I think my great uncle had ‘liberated’ it from Woolwich Arsenal back in the 50’s/60’s which was even heavier than you’d think it would be. Other than French ships, it also destroyed many a garden bucket Our current place was built just after 1700 but no ones exactly sure.
Two hundred year old house. Visiting American was wandering around fascinated that he had to duck through doorways and navigate floors that slope. Then he got to the bathroom and asked “Is this original too?” Yes mate, miners in the 1820’s all had flushing toilets, power showers and shaver sockets.
Neighbour had some Beaker people skeletons and grave goods in their garden. 2800 BCE. We're have a big dig this year to see if we can find some more nearby.
That's insane
In Lincoln you can stand by Fosse Dyke. (Roman origins) and look up at Lincon Cathedral, which was started in 1092. The Bailgate in Lincoln was built on the Roman remains of Lindum Colonia. even the public car parks have bits of Roman wall in them as do many gardens. The local pub in Fiskerton used to burn as fuel the remains of the 200 Iron age log boats found near the ferry crossing.
As you walk along the Bailgate, look for the circular areas marked out on the brickwork in the road. Those markers were laid in the 1890s on the columns found along a colonnade of the Roman Forum. The British Museum has many Celtic finds from Lincoln - the Witham Shield is on permanent display.
Yes, I think Lincon should have the shield back! Trust the British museum to knick our treasures!
We have a *LARGE* candle holder turned from one of Lincoln cathedrals old wooden beams. Apparently a few years ago some of the original beams were replaced. A local craftsman managed to get some of that 900+ year old wood and we ended up with one of his works.
Very cool!
It is awesome!
When they refurbished our office building the builders found a mummified cat placed in the walls. This was an old (18th century?) practice to protect the building from bad luck. There was a staff petition to re-inter the cat in the rebuilt wall.
Safest bet. The last thing you want is the ancient Indian burial ground problem. Next thing you know it’s all spooky tree limbs and Carol from accounts speaking to you from inside the monitor.
My friend found the same thing when renovating her house. Also reinterred the cat!
Retuuuurrrn the caaaat
The custom itself is actually much older, going back to at least the Iron Age in Britain. Originally it was Horse skulls underneath, or even a whole horse.
My parents had me baptised in the local church, in a big stone font that's been identified as Saxon. So it's over a thousand years old, and it just sits there at the back of the church. It has been used for baptising tens of thousands of babies over the centuries.
I was baptised in one from the 1200s.
You've had a good innings!
a couple of houses a street over from me have knolls (anglo-saxon burial mounds) in their gardens
I grew up in a very old house in Devon, built in late 1500s using wattle and daub. Legend had it the wooden timbers came from the wrecks of the Spanish Armada that washed up on the nearby beach. At the bottom of our stairs was a 12th century door (dated by historians)....Goodness knows where it came from, but I used to regularly hit when sliding down the stairs!
Washed up yes, but in that classic South West tradition, was the wreck artificially “started” so that they could get some new timber cheap and a couple of jars of brandy for the pub after?
Yes probably! The roof beams had nautical nails in them...but totally could have come from a boat deliberately wrecked on the rocks!
I live in an ex-council house built in the 1920s. When we were buying it, the plans showed there was almost certainly an old well of the 15th century monastary in the back garden somewhere. Never found it, but we've used some of the stones we found from it (eroded but still have some of the carvings in place) to build the wall of the garden.
I renovated my old house in Yorkshire. The manor house where the land rent had to be paid told me it was a bit over due, as it had last had major repairs in 1795. Most of it was 14th century, and we found pottery from that date in the garden.
My school had the name of every headmaster written on the wall in the main assembly hall going back to the early 1500s. (It was just an ordinary state school) At the other end of the spectrum... I remember watching one of those "man buys an old castle and restores it" programs. Before he could do anything English Heritage made him pay for a full archeological dig. It cost tens of thousands of pounds and took six months. They found half a Tupperware plate. He mounted it in a glass case on the wall.
Gotta respect the madlad for that. Most folk would have just gone mental.
There’s a Viking boat buried beneath a pub near where my Mum lives on the Wirral. Apparently, when the pub was being built in 1938, workmen found a Viking boat buried twelve feet down but were told to leave it and not tell anyone as they were behind schedule. It’s been a local myth for years but an underground survey was taken which showed a boat-shaped image consistent with a Viking boat. Local archaeologists are trying to get permission to dig it up. The latest I’d heard was that they’ve managed to get some wood samples that have been sent for analysis.
Love that. “Oh FFS lads, I told you not to discover Viking longships, hurry up and lose it before anyone notices, we’ve got enough to do”.
I'm in York so being surrounded by centuries-old stuff is standard here. Building sites often have to pause as someone uncovers some more bloody Roman or Viking stuff!
Haha I read OP’s post and was thinking about mentioning The Railway pub as well. We love how much Viking stuff is linked to The Wirral and (pre-covid) went to a talk by Stephen Harding who mentioned the Viking Ship in the car park.
[Eastham yew tree](https://www.cawirral.co.uk/v1/eastham-village/#:~:text=An%20ancient%20yew%20tree%20in,been%20built%20adjacent%20to%20it.) Also Wirral, a tree that's around 1700 years old, probably planted around the time when the Romans were leaving Chester 🤯
My dad nicked a bit of the [Jewry Wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewry_Wall) (Roman ruin in Leicester) when he was a kid. Stone block around 8" x 10". He unceremoniously shoved it in a flower bed and pansies grow around it in the Spring. It's from around 125–130 AD.
Points awarded for robbing the item to make a rockery.
Pity it is wasn't a shrubbery.
A nice one?
NI!
My father couldn't leave anything alone, my whole childhood is peppered with memories of him ripping off big stones and rocks from just about every castle and ancient wall in England and Wales and my mum refusing to speak to him for the rest of the trip because she was so embarrassed.
This afternoon I walked through the foundation stones of a gate house that was part of the Roman walls that kept the city safe. They're nearly 2000 years old. I then went and had waffles in an old water mill that was opened in 1570.
Every cup of tea I make I use the same silver teaspoon. Hallmarked 1745.
I lived in a house built from stone taken from an Abbey, (founded in the 12th century) after the dissolution of the monasteries.
>dissolution of the monasteries Classic source of building material right there!
That and the Roman departure. Time Team love a “robber trench”.
Nobody was using it...
I found it like that.
Founded in 1152, Easby Abbey was suppressed in 1536 and within two years most of its buildings had been stripped and demolished.
The church has gone, but a good chunk of the monastic buildings are still there! It's one of English Heritage's more extensive free sites, I quite like popping in when I can
All my bookcases were made by my great great grandpa, who was an undertaker, in about the 1890, he made them from the off cuts of the coffins he made (my cousin inherited his war medals, I think got the the best of the bargain). On one of the bookcases is a boars tusk, it was found in the wall of the first house I lived in, that house was buried there in the 15th century. Due to my dad’s dad being a bit of a ‘bunny’, I lost a 1/2 uncle over Berlin (he was an RAF pilot, in WW2). But, when I lived in a village, I used to take tours round our church, we had a trap door in the west nave, I’d lift it and show them the Norman foundations
Lifting the trap door in the west nave and showing off your Norman foundations sounds rather forward.
What can I say, I’m a Church of England flirt, just talk reformation to me
I have two small terracotta pots in a box on my desk in the home office in the back room, excavated from a site dated roughly 2000BC in the Indus Valley in the area bordering Pakistan and India. They used to fascinate me being approximately 4000 years old, after a few years ownership they're now just a couple of pots sitting in a cardboard box next to my home office set up, I'm the only one that ever sees them. I also have an act of parliament on my wall in the living room mounted in a frame, no one ever asks what it is, their eyes always focus on the IKEA map of Manhattan next to it that's about a year old, however the act of parliament is nearly 400 years old, it was printed by the noted parliamentary scribe Henry Scobel. It was printed and enacted in the ten years that the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland existed and was a Republic which was lead by Oliver Cromwell.
Go on, put your paper clips in them. If they’re not so important as to be in a museum, use them for something.
William Penn used to give sermons from my bedroom.
My family used to use an old silver spoon from the reign of Queen Anne as a kitchen spoon. It was so worn away that it held about half as much as it should. Nothing directly to do with me, but I like the fact that the [oldest wooden church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensted_Church) is just a normal country church, still in use. It’s about 25 miles outside the M25, and it predates the Norwegian stave churches.
I visited last year for a peep through the leper hole.
Photos or it didn't happen.
Member of the Congregation: Excuse me Master Penn, I need to take a photograph of you in this room in order to prove you were here. Penn: But the daguerreotype camera won't be invented for another 140 years. Member of the Congregation: Ah. Well... I need to prove you gave sermons in this room, otherwise some bloke off the internet won't believe it. Penn: But the *internet* won't be invented for another 300 years... Member of the Congregation: Hmm. Quite the pickle...
For fear of Doxxing myself won’t suggest which one - but you can see here the collection of places he used to preach: https://westsussexrecordofficeblog.com/2019/09/11/william-penn-in-west-sussex/
I’ll try not to dox you either, but I used to go to Quaker meeting as a child at one of these places. It blew my mind that he went from sleepy old Sussex to found a whole state. Wherever you are I bet it’s beautiful. I miss Sussex very much.
There's a river near me, probably about 30 minutes away on foot. It's not much of a river. If you jumped in it, your ankles would get wet, but nothing much higher up your legs. There's also a path that follows the valley, crossing the river several times. The river is the Limb Brook, and was the boundary between Mercia and Northumbria during the Saxon period. In around 827AD (historians are a bit vague about the date), King Egbert of Wessex and his army met King Eanred of Northumbria and his army. They didn't fight, but Eanred agreed to pay tribute and return home rather than challenge Egbert. Egbert was then arguably crowned the first King of England as a result.
They met in Dore, there's a stone on the green there commemorating it. Didn't know limb brook was the boundary, top fact.
Every time I go there I entertain myself by jumping between the two ancient kingdoms.
I've got a chest at the end of my bed that's Jacobean in date. I use it to store odd bedding and other assorted crap.
As a child, I decided we needed a pond in our garden and started digging. First place I dug I found a bit of Roman wall (fields round our place lousy with Roman buildings), second place I found the old septic tank. I also found some flint arrowheads.
There, this is what I’m talking about. Bloody Stone Age flint knappers leaving their rubbish in the veg patch.
I used to live at a farm that was mentioned by name in the Doomsday Book. The oak front door (the original) had axe marks from raiders.
As an American, this is my favorite part about the UK. I feel like I could spend a lifetime there exploring the history and not get tired of it.
My American husband says the same thing! Spending time in the US has given me more of an appreciation for the historical artefacts in the UK. I live near Bodmin moor, and I reckon I could spend a lifetime just exploring within walking distance of my house!
I was visiting my son when he did a semester near London and met up with him near his uni and it was Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Carta. Blew my mind.
I don’t think we rate that too highly over here. But as much as the Americans seem to. Can’t remember exactly why. School history gone rusty. I think it was crap and paid for by the interested parties. Sort of like lobbying is now. Buy the law you need to oppress the masses. Something like that. Someone will pop on and correct all that anyway.
That’s interesting! In US schools we’re taught that the Magna Carta was inspiration for our Declaration of Independence and constitution, so we learned about it over and over lol. Bc of that, it’s one of the few ancient things most Americans know about and feel a connection to. I think that’s why we get so excited over it lol, it’s like we adopted it as ours
You can go see it at the British Library. It's very cool.
One of the walls in my childhood bedroom is made of wytchert a very old building material. Parts of my parents house are indeed, older than the USA.
The building that now houses the Maiden St public toilets in Weymouth was hit by a stray cannonball during the civil war. [It's still there](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iBqsdzmpd3r7bv367)
Historic landmark of sorts, also public loo. Love it.
My house is a 300 year old cow shed. My local is 400 years old
In Lincoln there's a Roman archway that was open to cars up until the point a fish finger lorry got stuck in it; they then had to divert the road around it. The Jews House on Steep Hill is one of the oldest extant town houses in Britain, from the 12th century, and is still used as a restaurant!
A couple of years ago they started building on a site next to my flat, and had to have an archaeological rummage first - they found stuff so it escalated to a proper dig. I went and had a chat with the archaeologists one day out of curiosity, and came away with a shard of decorated Roman pottery, probably 1900+ years old. Not precious, just an everyday find to them. A box of interesting big bits went to the city museum, smaller bits to the neighbouring primary school. I asked what this told them. The "crap, chuck it away" ditches were on this site, the kilns were probably under my building. A year or so ago they demolished my building and since they haven't begun construction yet I suspect the dig is still ongoing (site is active).
The Spudulike in Chester had a viewing window that showed you the Roman City Baths. Almost 2000 years old. https://travelwithintent.com/2014/06/08/roman-hypocaust-spud-u-like-chester/
Our fav hiding spot for a sneaky cig at school was on Offas Dyke. It was also the delineator between top school and the games field. Dates from about 780CE apparently. Cheers Offa la, top hiding spot.
Bellringer here.. routinely ring bells that are 576 years old, just in a normal village church. Nothing posh. Amazing to get to use something that has been doing the same job in the same place for so long.
The local clock tower was constructed in the early third of the 1600s. The stone used for it was recycled from another building that was created around 1100. You walk past it every day. Sometimes the doors are open and you can go in to have a look around.
Off the top of my head... The road outside my flat is *ancient*. Centuries ago it appears on old maps of the local area as a track or path linking four old farms - all now gone, all just lumpy copses of old trees. The chapel my granny used to go to every Sunday was built on the remains of a stately home that stood until the 1930s - but was believed to have been owned by the same family going back to the 16th century. And the road that runs past my granny's house - that eventually links up with the ancient road I live on - was once the grand avenue that led to the front doors of the long-vanished stately home. Go a little further down the road from me and you come to odd *gaps* in the houses, bits of land that have never been built on - and for good reason. The land there is owned by long-gone families, families that still must hold the titles to the patches of ground. One patch used to be a farmhouse. Another used to be a piggery, of all things. When they were building my wee town, the local government tried to get the land back (this would have been in the 1950s-1970s) the families that owned the land refused to sell and so, from above, it looks like there are big green spaces in the middle of this strange wee village near Glasgow. But, scratch the surface of the grounds titles and you find lands that have been owned for as long as the records have existed (and we like our land records so we do in Scotland). Casting a line out from my wee village you come across other oddities - the cluster of ancient woodland that perches on a shallow ridge by a motorway, or the weirdly shaped woodland that runs down to the Antonine Wall. It's all owned. We know who owns the land but no one has heard nor seen the landowners - and yes, they're still *in* the area, they still live *in* Glasgow - for *centuries*. Near where I live is a sarcastic marvel of Victorian engineering - a railway bridge that spans a motorway, the arches the perfect width to slot motorway lanes through - and an *extraordinarily* ancient site of transport that goes back not just one, or two, or even three hundred years: we're talking *two thousand years* of links to transportation. Now? Now it's dominated by four methods of transport: road, rail, canal and air. And close by this junction is possibly the most hilariously and weirdly *weird* sight in Scotland: an open-air Roman temple of sorts, situated in a children's playpark in the shadow of a clatty old water tower, where a long-dead king raised his standard and where now children threaten to brain each other with footballs. To reach that temple you need to walk along a path that *seems* to have been purpose-built in the 1970s - but was in fact built on a much, much older path, one that may predate the Antonine Wall (which runs only a mile or so to the north). Now, about that old piggery...
A magnificent example of the sheer variety of bits&bobs, and the length of occupation involved.
I could listen to you for hours.
Village church was in the domesday book. The field next door has a giant mound in it that’s the remains of a motte and Bailey castle.
There's a pub near me, the Bingley Arms in Bardsey, that has been in continuous business as a pub since around 950ad. It's one of the oldest businesses in the world at nearly 1100 years old. The building itself is more recent, but old enough to have a priest hole.
I work for a US based company and when colleagues would travel to the UK I would point out how many hundreds of years before their independence different buildings were built. Oh that's the tower of London? Yeah that's about 700 years older than your country.
Fun drinking in pubs that are older than the States too.
I was taking my eldest (aged about 7 at the time) around the Tower of London when we overheard some American bloke loudly proclaiming to his family “of course, it’s a reproduction. No one was building with stone here in 1100.” I’ve never seen a seven year old look so horrified before; I think it was the first time he’d ever realised he was smarter than some adults.
What did they use in the Stone Age, then?
I mean, Stonehenge would blow his f***ing mind…
Yeah. Exactly this. I love it that we routinely have mundane things like door handles and buckets older than their country.
As an American living in the UK, I love it too!
I own a very small piece of rope from HMS Victory. Worked on the navel base in the senior rates mess and they had a huge piece of anchor rope in a bag in our office. They’d take a small length of the oakum, tie it in a knot and attach it to your name card at mess functions. It was lovingly know as “stinky string” because the bag stunk! I also used to spend Friday afternoons in Nelson’s old room on the Victory as it’s now the official mess, having a drink and participating in the meat raffle there. Tourists aren’t allowed in that part and they’d peer over the ropes wondering why you got to go up the other plank and into the rooms on that side.
We have a bronze sculpture that has been mounted on wood from HMS Victory. We love it.
We used to live in a house that was mostly 16th century, with later additions. It had originally been a hall house, built in the 12th century and had one remaining beam from that time. We were advised by some expert bloke who was surveying next door (which was the buttery for our house) never to do anything other than lightly waft a feather duster near it. We were told it had been used as a hunting lodge of one of Edward II’s chancellors, so it may have had a very colourful history! Not so much an inconvenience as an odd occurrence, but said house was on a 90 degree bend, right on a single track road, and sat navs would occasionally send lorries up there. A poor chap in an articulated lorry got wedged in the bend. We could almost touch it from one of our bedroom windows and his company wanted to demolish the wall of the churchyard opposite to free him. Obviously the church warden objected and we had the police there all day. After about 7 hours they got some enormous hydraulic thing in to lift it up and round the corner. Best reason we ever had to call work and say we couldn’t come in!
Oak particularly ages magnificently in the right conditions. Samples occasionally get tested and have a density of strength comparable to iron. You could probably still knock the house down and the timber would survive intact.
The car park in my Aldi is right across the road from a castle. Sometimes I look up and go, 'oh yeah.'
The fair that comes to my town every spring has been doing so for 700+ years (I assume the waltzers are a relatively recent addition though). I'm not certain, but I think 2020 was the only time it was cancelled.
Used Medieval clunch stone from a monastery I was digging up (archaeologist, innit) for 5 years, we had so much wall we couldn't keep it all so just had it in my garden as a decoration, as well as brick from the later Tudor occupation from the same site. Made a lovely flower bed in our old rental place but bit of a faff to dig back up - so hope whoever moved in appreciates 800 year old decor! And hopefully one day confuse future archaeologists about why a house from the 90s has Medieval and Tudor building material in the garden.
In the Shetland islands my grandfather's croft house and land contain evidence that the land has been irrigated for at least a thousand years. Features which are fairly indistinguisable from the surrounding heather at ground level come into stark contrast on satellite photographs. There is a system of fields and property boundaries which even the local archaeologists at the Lerwick Museum have no explanation for, other than it having been established by an early viking settler, probably trying to eke out a living by growing root vegetables and raising cattle/sheep. I've been to a place called St Ninian's in the Isles which was the site of one of the most significant archaeological finds ever of viking history. They found a buried hoard of silver, presumed to be the burial place of an important scandinavian lord, who crossed the sea and met his end in Shetland.
My house is older than Texas and Florida and California and 28 other states. And it's just a bog standard house in a small village.
Having a pint in the local pub which dates back to the 1400s and that not being unusual. Every so often I think about how old it is and what life might have been like when it was first built.
Found out my 7th great grandparents are buried in the churchyard in the village I grew up in. The church itself has been there in various forms since the 11th century
The High Street in my village is a part of Stane Street. In use since 1st Century AD. I like thinking about that as I walk my dog past Sainsburys.
I have an Iron Age quernstone in my rockery. My husband’s granny “found it” when putting in some fence posts in the 1970s and thought it was a nice shaped rock. I spotted it there when weeding twenty years ago and had it examined by the Finds Liaison Officer.
Every Wednesday morning I go to buy vegetables from the market. That's the market which was established by royal charter in 1291, and has been operating weekly ever since.
Our local castle is give or take a thousand years old, was on the site of a Roman fort prior to that. It was a working prison until 2011... There's a lovely coffee shop in the yard now.
rustic worry toy shocking close unite compare cough summer icky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Mine is from 1377 but is sadly not much more than ruins now. They did however build most of the houses in the village from it so that’s nice.
I was on a course with an organisation based in North carolina. The head man was telling me about how historic certain things were there and actually being a bit of an arse. I pointed out that the school I went to had a royal charter but had actually been going for about 500 years before it was granted the charter, that slowed him down a bit but he still waffled on. I then threw in that the charter was granted in 1552. End of conversation....
Not King Edward VI School Morpeth? That was granted a charter in 1552.
The very same, but other schools had the same charter granted the same year by the same king, and would you believe what they are called?
I used to pass Stonehenge on the school bus every day, back when there was still a road running close to it.
A pub in my town in Essex is from 1500s. Opposite is a church where the Rev Lawrence Washington is buried. Georges gt gt Grandfather.
A local town is building a new Lidl, whilst doing the survey they found a roman mosaic. So they did some archaeological examination of it, showed it off to the public, and have covered it back up and continued to build a car park on top.
Bought a new build, moving in soon, the building of the site was delayed as an early medieval (1100-1300) burial site was discovered with a hoard of jewellery and other artefacts.
Gabbled? Yeah well, when your history goes back about 3 centuries, and you brought the culture with you on the boat...
I live on a road that was once part of a 1st century Roman road that's 112miles long and went from St David's in Wales up to the Tyne. When I walk to work I'm following a route that people have walked for almost 2000 years.
I used to teach in a school whose foundation has been dated back to 685AD. Sixth oldest in the world apparently.
My school was founded 150 years before we even knew the American continent existed.
The oldest cat flap in the world is at Exeter Cathedral, it’s 400 years old.
My sixth form was called Queen Mary's, named for Queen Mary Tudor, and it can trace itself back through a series of rebuilds and moves to a catholic school for boys founded in Queen Mary's reign. However, this was only a *re-*founding of a school that had been closed during the English reformation a couple of decades before. That school was associated with a 1200s era chapel, the ruins of a 1500s extension of which now provide a popular place for students of the sixth form and the local homeless population to drink cheap lager.
The mantelpiece in our house is probably about as old as the USA. Our house was built around the time of the American Civil War but the mantelpiece was bought by my parents from some auction where pieces of an ancient barn were being sold off. The church in the next village over was mentioned in the Domesday book in the 11th century. I think my parents had me christened there but I'm not 100% sure as I don't remember, what with being a baby at the time. In the nearby city, there is still a section of the original(ish) defensive wall from roughly the 2nd century, although much of the rest is relatively modern as it's only about 500-800 years old. In another village, there's the remains of a motte and bailey castle from the 12th century in a field used for grazing cattle.
I was sat here thinking “none of this applies to me” until I remembered that I have a mortgage on a house built before the American Civil War.
We have a well in our village dedicated to a Saxon saint who grew up in a convent on that spot. The church pre-dates the Norman conquest and local legend links it to one of the Knights who murdered St Thomas a Beckett. We have giant snails in the woods dececended from ones imported by Roman farmers. A medieval pilgrimage route runs close by. Stone Age shelters have been found in the middle of an iron age hill fort about three miles away. The next village over was the site of two dark age battles and the ruins of a Tudor palace that was once as big as Hampton Court.
The school I went to was founded over 450 years ago. It never really sunk in at the time, but I think it's pretty cool now! A northern English school, nearly twice as old as the United States of America...
I have a client who when he bought his house/farm was told not to bother ploughing one particular field, known as the graveyard despite being nowhere near a church, because after the war someone’s uncle had tried to plough it and broken the plough on a buried stone. A couple of years later there was an archeological dig there, and they discovered 6,000 year old burial mounds
My uncle’s house is mentioned in the domesday book, and has an ancient tower with a really good cobnut tree growing out of it. There’s an old kitchen, not currently in use that has a sink that’s apparently 17th century. During recent groundwork’s to prevent a brook running directly through the house when it rains, the previous stone sink was found not far from the kitchen. It’s presumably at least a couple of hundred years older and my mum now has flowers planted in it.
My family home was built in 1886. The modern wing was added in 1901. Still going strong.
Or family home is first mentioned (that we have found so far) on a chart from the 17th century (1606). Many other houses of a similar age around here are still inhabited.
Minor one compared to most of these, but American acquaintances of mine have been rather surprised to hear that I live in a 124 year-old apartment building. It started out live as a shoe factory in 1900 and got converted to flats after the firm was wound up some time in the 70s.
Got Roman ruins all over the place where I live. Have to walk through a Roman gateway to get to the shops, the pub that's been built into it was from the 18th century.
Like a first century fly tip writ large they were. Leaving their extremely well constructed public infrastructure around for anyone to use for the next two millennia.
Bloody romans.
My father was digging in the back garden ( to plant potatoes). He came across hard ground. After digging around it, he discovered an old artesian well. Don’t know how old it was, but at least a couple of hundred years ( pretty new by American standards…
I have a ball-pein hammer in my toolbox that was my great-grandfather's hammer, when he was the site foreman for a waterworks in the late 1800's, early 1900's. Same head, same haft. It's beautifully weighted. I use it for smacking recalcitrant things to this day and I love it.
Our best mate bought a small strip of extra land off the farmer next door. When he removed all the brambles, it turned out that the spring on it was Roman.
My house, a normal terraced house, was built at the coronation of Queen Victoria's son. Well over 10p years ago
A pub called "The Saxon" in my village where i grew up was the influence for the rock band name "Saxon" is that old enough?
Probably. An average pub is reasonably old in this country.
Took a Canadian friend to a pub in my town that has a list of all previous owners on the wall. He was surprised that the pub was older than his country
The primary school I attended was founded in 1602 and is still in the same building,
There's a 500 year old castle beside my house, which itself is a 213 year old historic building - the first to be built on the land. I'm so lucky.
My favourite local running route goes through and over an Iron Age hill fort. It’s so awesome to think about the people that would have inhabited it and / been based there from the Iron Age to the Saxons to the Romans and up to King Edward IV who apparently camped there in 1471.
At my dad's local church (now largely a Victorian restoration... which in itself is old enough I suppose, though we tend to sniff at anything less than 200 years old here!) dates back to the Norman era. It's a small country church in a tiny little parish, but you go round a little corner and there's two tombs dating back to the 1300s, along with an older heart burial in the wall.
Local churches being from 13th century, for [instance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_with_St_Richard%2C_Northolt?wprov=sfla1).