Loft Reconnaissance

Going Where No-one Has Gone Before For a Long Time

It's time to start work on the loft but before we can start formulating plans we need to know what we're working with. Before we moved, we had a surveyor check out the house and one of the disaster zones he identified was the loft. It was old, it was worn out but it was, at least, watertight. For now. 

But those pictures were just quick shots of the roof and were taken before the owners at the time had fully moved out. So there was a big question to be answered - What had been hastily stuffed up there at the last moment to get it out of sight? Oh, and "is the roof high enough to do a permitted development design" but I know you're here for the former question and you aren't going to be disappointed...

Into the Unknown

No YouTube trickery here - this video documents the very first time I poked my head up through that loft hatch. Apologies for filming in portrait when you'll likely be viewing it landscape - It's been 17 years since I made YouTube videos regularly so I'm a bit rusty!

What I discovered is that it's already a surprisingly nice space to be in. It's easy to envision having a snug little room up there. I was reassured that whatever sort of expansion we have the budget for, this would be a really nice space.

I did some measurements to get some rough plans drawn up (plans that I'll share later) but I also found a curious array of discarded paraphernalia...

Some sort of clothing hooks. Excellent condition at first glance.

Not a box or a car battery. On closer inspection this was a loudspeaker. Just the one.

Hideous wallpaper. If anyone has any idea when this might date to, do let me know.

An absolutely HUGE aerial. This looks fairly specialist. I wonder if someone who lived here was a hobbyist of some sort?

Not a clue. Random pole firmly attached to a beam. Just poking out ready to take an eye out. Why?!

Random art.

Bunting - possibly for a Jubilee celebration?

More flags, some face masks, a photo of the queen and some tinsel. The pic of the queen and all the flags are what makes me think jubilee rather than any other type of party. Can't explain the masquerade masks though; hope they weren't for anything kinky.

A disassembled something

Possible bee nest. Vacant

The Dimensions of Time

My favourite bit of going through all of this is trying to date it all. The jubilee stuff is likely 2012, though that picture is much older. The rest I couldn't date. 

That said, I found some random scraps of newspaper, which got me excited. I love finding old newspapers and seeing what the fuss of the day was back then. They are also good dating evidence. This scrap of newspaper wasn't going to give up its age easily though. The date was missing, so some detective work was required.

I searched through the scraps for something intelligible that I would have a chance of figuring out. That resulted in the above picture. Straight away, I had a name, a competition, a sport and a relative data to be looking for. 

 

I Googled Harold Henning, found out he was a South African golfer who was actively competing from 1953 to 2002. There was no mention of this competition on his Wikipedia page though. So I needed to get that date range down.

So the next step was to search for the Pringle golf competition. I expected to be bombarded by results for crisps but, to my relief, there was a relevant Wikipedia page. Turns out that the competition was sponsored by Pringle of Scotland (a clothing company) and they only sponsored this event from 1964 to 1967.

Well, that certainly narrowed things down. Last step - who won in what year? Did the page mention this? Yes it did.

Harold Henning won the inaugural Pringle of Scotland Tournament on Saturday 22nd August 1964.

That dates this scrap of newspaper to the day after; some 57 years, 5 months and 27 days before today.

I don't know if anything significant happened that day to necessitate the keeping of a newspaper cutting so I'm going to assume it was just being used for packaging. Either way - mind blown!