Upstairs #2

A while ago I went up into the roof through the manhole near the back of the house and found another attic room that we didn't know was there. This was before we'd been into the main attic room and it was completely unexpected to find a bonus room but it clearly wasn't connected to the attic rooms with the dormer window. Apparently houses of this era often had a windowless room in the roof as sleeping quarters for a servant, particularly if the servant was a convict. I gather there was no window so they couldn't escape.

Liz at the only opening for the attic room

Me in the mystery attic room

Liz and I decided to go and re-explore the extra attic room when we checked out the main rooms. Because there is no window and we only had a phone camera, the photos are pretty bad but you can sort of see the shape of the room - the walls are dark. This room is in pretty bad condition. There has been a skylight bashed through the room at some stage and many of the floor boards are missing. Each of the side walls also has a large hole in it, possibly to allow access for an electrician. Despite all of this, the bits that are left are in good condition and you can imagine what the room would have looked like.

The room also provides some more insight into how the house was built and the stages of construction. There is a brick wall at either end and the wall at the back of the house has a window like hole in it - the opening that Liz is about to climb through in the photo above. It looks like pre-1920 the roof was gabled at this point and this was an external wall. The bedroom at the back of the house was added in 1920.

The room has floorboards and the walls are made of split wood nailed to a frame and then covered with a plaster.

This is covered in plaster to make the walls

Interestingly the wooden shigles from the front of the house extend about a metre past the brick wall that seems to mark the back of the original four room house. The fact that the shingles extend past this wall makes me wonder if there is another explanation. One possibility is that this room is also very early and that the brick wall between this room and the rest of the roof cavity was to add security. Hopefully the heritage expert will be able to shed some light on this.