90 Strange Things Found In Old Homes

Memories: in the ‘50s my grandfather had the lids of pint jars screwed to the underside of a shelf above his bench. In each jar were screws, nails, bolts, and nuts and a bit of camphor to keep them from rusting.

Lowers chandelier for cleaning in the dining room below

Pencil sharpener
I especially like the placement of the dry wall screw , so when you trim your pencil you can rip your knuckles w

My guess… a drain. Then again, a portal to Lucifer's Lair.
Pour a bucket of water down and see if it drains…. But make it Holy Water. That way you are covered on both possibilities.

Ash removal , my Grandmother had one . There's a container in basement that collect the ashes. The reason she saved hers , in the Spring when she planted her Vegetable Garden she used wood ash too keep the bugs away. She didn't like it the ideal of pesticides . Really the food she grew was Organic! Hooray for my grandmother !!

It's to stop people from peeing in the alley, it'll splash back on them

Mezuzah. Jewish people have them at each door (except bathrooms). They touch the mezuzah and then kiss their fingers. Inside is a small paper Torah scroll. It's a visual reminder that G-d is always present.

Public toilet lock, and in the UK the source of the saying "I need to spend a penny" as a polite way of saying that you're going to the loo. A penny was the charge when public toilets were first installed, and I remember them still being in use in department store toilets when I was a kiddie, as well as outdoor public toilets.

Because the old doors was not made of cardboard

Corner bollard to protect the corner of the building from cart wheels.

This small, domed stone structure in the UK is known as a "village lock-up" or sometimes referred to as a "round-house lock-up" or "cage" in local terminology. These were once common in British villages from the 18th and 19th centuries and were used to temporarily detain drunks, petty criminals, or people who had been arrested before they could be taken to a magistrate or larger jail.

The object found in the old farmhouse is a glass fire grenade.
These items were a form of early fire extinguisher, popular from the 1880s to the 1930s. They were typically filled with fire-retardant liquids, such as salt water or carbon tetrachloride, and designed to be thrown at the base of a fire to extinguish it.

The heat came up from the coal furnace in the cellar. I can actually remember when my grandparents still used theirs. There were smaller grates in the ceilings on the first floor that let heat go up to the second floor bedrooms. They also doubled as an intercom system. You just yelled up or down through them if you needed something

It supposedly bult crooked to keep witches from entering.
Many older homes have crooked chimneys

There used to be a tradition where you would hide the house key in the newel post as a symbol of ownership to grant prosperity to the home.

Corded phone, like an at home phone booth lol

Boot scraper to get dirt off your shoes before you enter the house.

Omg an ancient Roman bath house, the first ever discovered in America. You should turn your house into a museum and charge 10$ per person

It’s a furnace control damper. Chain would’ve been attached to open or close the damper

This was for rooms to call for service.
Evidently this household was large enough to have maids or ‘footmen’ and this told them which room required their attendance.

Supposedly these features were the toilets. They just dropped right out to the moat.

Yes…that rack used to hold porcelain insulators, and incoming electrical wires were once tied to them for electrical service. Common on buildings in the 1920s-1950s.

Coal furnace it opens and shut the damper

Damper from when the house had a coal furnace

Drying racks if large dowels for blankets sheets and so forth smaller for towels etc.

It’s probably the original staircase to the attic. A lot of people put the bathroom in there because the space wasn’t being used when plumbing first came out.

As the wife of a Mason this chimney is fully functional. It has flues on both sides of the window, that allow the smoke to rise. The window works at it should opening and closing.

Yes, there are old window weights

It’s a dinner bell. Turn the crank, ring the bells, the farm crew come running for their dinner.

The Exhaust fan - for smell of fried chicken, bacon, sofrito, rice and beans to billow out into the neighborhood…

Yeah. This house, built in early 1950s, has hard wood tongue & groove flooring. The lamp that lightens the stairway is missing but was on/off by a two-way switch at this bottom dite & the head of the stairs above. A Great way to save an the electric bill!

Navy. Brass bc well everything is brass
S. R. Is state room (where officers live
It tells where the different toilets drain. It is a souvenir from someone’s past. Not Sears roebuck but i like the thought
I’m a submarine guy so I don’t know where mds mdp and all that. Lines up to
mid something portside
Mid something starboard side
Mid something P & S. (Left and right side. ).

It says Ariel right on it. Old antenna plug for a tv or radio back in the day

Electrical insulators for an old electric service

I think it may be a closed well. If you look at the bricks there are several layers and it looks to be in shape of a circle. An outhouse most likely wouldn't have that many bricks. But it could be a cistern where they gathered water (rain water) for animals, irrigation of some sorts, but they are usually kind of like a barrel or enclosed.

That looks like half a fluorescent lamp set up with the ballast still there

A damper control for a coal furnace. If the floor hasnt been covered over you will find two small holes in the floor below if that the damper chains would have passed through

Speaking tube , some you’d blow through and they’d whistle and then you’d talk to the person on the other end.

They are called whistles. You use them to nail into . You can install trim or flashing using them

Fire grenade, it's safe as long as its sealed. Some people collect them. Just be careful with it, keep it somewhere safe, it will still put out a fire as well. It contains carbon tetrachloride.

Missing parts to a water well pump. We see them here a lot and people take them apart for lawn ornaments . They don’t work - just for decoration

That is an old utility transformer / service entrance distribution point, likely from the 1930s–1950s era.
It’s basically the building’s main power feed, long before modern breaker panels were standard.

That is a decorative element called a drop finial. There is probably a newel post above it.

1930s bakelite outlet. These were usually surface mounted for use with multiple plug types.

It’s a mechanical doorbell where you turned a k**b on the outside of the door and it rang the bell, I just about bought a house that had one of these but a more modern version from the 1930s.

The scales like that were used in assay offices. You put the precious metal on one side and you added weights to the other side until it balanced. They also use those in General stores to weigh merchandise that was sold by the pound

Telephone shelf

It’s was for the horse and cart

I remember before these they were in walls to allow heat from fireplaces to get to other rooms, in the 1800s things changed a bit, but there was always a way to make sure the heat traveled through,whether from coal stoves, or wood or other there were always forms of making heat travel through old houses

Card tables? Maybe they hosted a lot of game parties? It was a much bigger thing back in the day. I found out that the first few owners hosted all kinds of events in my house through searching the local newspaper for my address. They had bunko and bridge parties, "fashion" parties for wives, all kinds of community organization parties, etc. They didn't have social media, so they put ads in the newspaper when the next party was scheduled

The horseshoe signifies good luck. Point up like in the photo means catching good luck. Pointing down means showering with good luck.

That’s an old telephone lol
You could hear when it’s time for dinner
No central heat then, each kitchen had a stove and that was the hvac of the day
Also a rock by the stove was there to take to bed to keep you warm at night

Keeps the witch's out of the jacuzzi

Radiant Heater, possibly used to provide enough heat to prevent freezing in the winter months

Its a Garbage disposal, someone would pick up the old waste food to Feed pigs at a Farm near by. After heating g it with Steam, from a boiler

It's an old water tank where the water was pumped from the cistern into the tank. My hand. It had a check valve on it so the water could be pressurized. There was one in my house when I bought it. I still have it so there was a hand pump prior to the tank with a check valve. Simple as that and when the pressure dropped you had to go and pump it up again

Wooden spool from wire-could be electricity wire or it could b from barbed wire if it’s a farm house

Vent for attic

There could be one of three things it could be it could be a water shut off valve for the outside. It could be a wooden truffle that’s underneath the floor to make the floor sit flat you turn it and it provides tension on that board or releases tension or it could bea air duct vent valve that’s in the floor

Furnace/flue control.
It would be your home thermostats great, great, granddaddy

Door bell transformer. Still have one in my house

It's what they call a dry. Well you have a septic tank before that and then as it comes out of the tank it goes into the drywall and then leeches into the ground. That's what I have at my house and it works perfect

It's where the flu pipe came through the floor to heat that room

By any chance is there an outbuilding on the property? Sometimes they would use a buzzer or bell to let people know dinner was ready if they were in the outbuilding.

An insulator. Were used back when closet coated wiring was common.

It is possible to do if each joint is 2 pieces of timber and placed in layers from bottom to top.
Although this image may have had the grain AI ed to fuse the grain.

It is an old telephone lightning arrestor, a safety device used in older homes to protect against lightning strikes on telephone lines. Back in the day I knew of several people who lost their lives and several others, one of which who lived to be struck by lightning a second time, surviving two strikes.

It is an old telephone hardwire connection.

It is for laundry. I have one without the holes. The clothes or whatever is hot in the pot. It could also be yarn. Whatever you have to stir to clean the laundry..... or really anything that is hot. The holes, I think, help against the resistance. Or if it is short its for spanking and again the holes help against the air resistance.

There was a rope it worked like pulley that object served as a weight because the windows were made so heavy and very long . The rope has seen it's better days and gone.

Well pump possible a sump pump but am leaning more at actual pump motor. That's an electric style one it looks like the gas ones is pretty much once ya got it going it went till it ran out of gas or if ya stopped it ya self an shut it down. I got a dozen or so of those old style motors gas an electric from grandpa I don't really know much about em still learning on em

Cream separator, let's cream rise to top then open valve at bottom to drain milk off

It was probably added as a phone nook. Since phones didn't appear till the 1920s. Probably held a candlestick phone.

Duct bank to support the foundation from moving in from the weight of the soil outside the wall. Typical old type build

This hook may serve as an attachment point for equine-drawn vehicles or horses in general

It’s a nut and rod that runs down the center of the post and secures it to the subfloor below…. You may be able to see the opposite end looking up between the joists in the basement.
Also, sometimes the homes architectural drawings were placed in the newel post for safekeeping. It happened occasionally with some vintage houses

Probably the main water shutoff. I've seen this as a way to shut off water to the house when it's in the crawlspace or other inconvenient place. It could also just be for a specific run or fixture.

That’s a tandem-parallel outlet. They can be used with modern parallel-blade plugs, but at the time, tandem-blade plugs were also in use and were common enough that outlets were made which could accept both plug types.
This specific one is probably from the 1920s, made by GE.
The visible part of the outlet is made of hard rubber and is not burnt, but has always been black.

It’s a Saxon game where these were painted differently and made to look like animals then catapulted against walls and wooden buildings..if you were successful you would proceed to next level

It’s how you controlled the furnace in the basement without going in the basement

In the middle of the dining room floor, it’s definitely a servant call button that sat under the dining table and the host/hostess could tap it with their toe to summon servants discreetly.

My guess, to tell the guys in the basement, to keep stoking the furnace and full steam ahead!

I ‘ve often seen this in older houses, and in sheds and summer- kitchens. This was an economy. The chimney going through the attic and roof had to be brick for fire safety. But bricks cost money, so they were used only where required.