Out with the Old and in with the New

We left our Pile of Rubble alone for a few weeks, whilst we contemplated the amount of work needed to get it back to its former Georgian glory. Our house pre dates Queen Victoria, as it was built in 1834. Unfortunately at this point we thought most of the original features had been discarded by previous owners, leaving us with a Georgian shell held together with oh so beautiful 1970’s wood chip.

Our Pile of Rubble has wood chip everywhere, on the ceiling, all the walls, in fact three floors of glorious wood chip. There was nothing for it we had to hire an industrial wall paper stripper, oh and the lovely Rob 🙂

Our Pile of Rubble has been many things in its 184 year history. We believe it started life as a bakery, and behind a false wall in the basement we discovered the original ovens.

We were so excited to find these, as we had been told by the heritage centre that they thought they didn’t exist. One of our first jobs on day one was the discovery of our ovens. This involved the taller one aimlessly hitting a false wall in the basement with a hammer, hastily purchased from Hursts in Ventnor High Street. Excitement around picking up the keys saw us leave all our tools in Aldershot, handy when you are on The Isle Of Wight. Once the hole had been made, the trusty iPhone camera and torch confirmed our find 🙂

As well as a bakery, we believe it has also been used as a bicycle repair shop and a car showroom. This explains the concrete covering over the entire back garden.

Unfortunately the deeds to our Pile of Rubble have been destroyed, and so we only have a number instead of an amazing historical document, this makes us very sad. If anyone has any idea how we could get hold of them, as I can’t believe they destroyed such a big document, then please let us know.

The remnants of our Pile of Rubbles’ past life are scattered throughout the house, and we have had fun over the last few months finding them. The biggest legacy remaining in the house is its former use as a B&B. With multiple 1970s inspired bathrooms.

Not only have we found the old sign.

We have also had to remove the four en-suite bathrooms, industrial looking kitchen and four false walls, that we can only imagine went up to try and square off the rooms within the B&B.

Behind every false wall we have found bits of our Pile of Rubbles’ history, the most amazing find, was a totally random 1834 fully working sash window. we have no idea why a previous owner would have built a wall around this interesting feature, and we have come up with some very interesting Pinterest ideas regarding its future use.

We intend to keep any original item we find, unless of course we find a mummified cat or a Victorian Childs shoe. Thankfully we have yet to discover any of these, as the Victorians liked to bury them in walls to ward off evil spirits. As our next adventure with our Pile of Rubble, now that we have stripped it of its B&B life, is to prepare it for the stitching to take place, we could uncover many more secrets. However to date our favourite find still has to be the original baking ovens.

#historicalfinds #ventnorheritagecentre #hurstsofventnor #ventnor #jewsons #B&Q #diy #design #creativeart #pintrest #lgbt