Update on the Water situation - Waters fine even after some recent rain, I've still got a few more months of that before I consider it clean enough to put the effort in getting it connected to the house, the workshop and the other buildings.
Update on the Honey Hole -
To start -
Fucking hell I am knackered, and the finds just haven’t stopped coming there is a room we have been calling "The Watch Shop" as everything in it was extremely high precision, extremely well maintained watchmakers / precision instrument making tools and that means £££, I've found 12 complete sets of WW (watchmakers type named after Webster Whitcomb a Superintendent of a big American Watchmakers company) in EVERY size that was ever made from the dinky 4mm (not very common even when new) right the way to the Chonky 12mm in Soft (copper lined), Plane Steel (think mild steel) and Hardened and Square in round and in both Imperial an Metric sizes oh and those 12 I mentioned that's per Lathe each lathe of every size apart from the 4mm full set of collets.
3 of the stations had Bench mounted microscopes and various Objective lenses for them this was for the era insane luxury, most people would have at most a loupe or binocular glasses, they also had from the factory mounts for really tiny dolls house style light bulbs (found a box full of replacements too), We also found a bunch of "Dross" on slides with dates from the 1920's Dross is the cuttings from work so somebody in this shop was doing work in metalurgy and cutting tool geometry and the notebook I found next to them confirms it but I've yet to read it as it's written in a beautiful well schooled Spencerian hand.
Same room we found a plethora of other extremely high quality tools from tiny to - Holy fucking shit what is that??? In the corner there was a Tarpaulin just tossed over something we had to clear a path to -
A Rose Engine a big one. These things are incredibly rare let alone the various essential accessories and the often custom paterns an how they where done where not documented outside of generalities to give you an example this is one of the VERY few machine tools I have next to no knowledge of putting into use outside of the very basics, and this doesn’t have a makers plate on it not even a place where one should be this looks like it was custom made for there own use and I have no idea of the value of it either they come up so fucking rarely let alone with documentation or accessories, this is going to be a bastard to sell because its so large and so unique weirdly every dimension on it other than the Threads of the Bolts an Screws is Metric (threads are all Whitworth or BSF so Whitworth fine).
I've also found a fuckton of notebooks here all with project names or contract numbers on that I 'avent even begun to go through but it's all for scientific equipment and I've found in this room a lot of old Chemical containers (let alone the whole site) enough stuff to make us have to get a Chemical disposal bin set delivered to site including a bottle of Cyanide that held a pint of the stuff while I doubt anything left is viable I'd rather not take the risk and I've insisted that I'm going to be the only one who handles anything like this and I ware better PPE than would be issued to a Soldier when doing so (my health is already questionable and I don't want to put anyone else at risk).
The next room we've taken to calling the Drawing Room as this is a really nice once well lived in space that was originally a Draughting Room from the looks of it a triplet of really nice Victorian cast iron an wood Draughting Tables an stools, I've found whole reams of unused paper (that's collectable on it's own), Draughtsmans tools (one set sadly ruined by rust) old dry ink bottles and a big central Map Table and a Comfy Chair, Book case, and a old cast iron kettle and random tins with Tea an Sugar written on them, this looks like it was we think Old Boy Geoff's inner sanctum there was a old news paper dated June 93 by the fire that confirms the date. Some of the books here where the Creme of the Crop technical books most of them Hard Bound 1st editions an cover nearly every technical field you could imagine, so far just as I was boxing them up I've found 3 copys of the Machineries handbook from 1914, and several copies of other editions as well.
I've only nosed through some of the other papers but I saw a November 1916 design for "Vickers Teleimetric Trigger" this is older Enginner speek for a Remote Aiming an Triggering system for a Vickers Gun (English Maxim), and while this never went into production I recognise some parts from the design I've seen in other sources but one thing that stood out was a red ink hand written note "Impractical - refine" on each page, that in of it's self is intresting as they where doing some seriously advanced theiory work during the war not just focusing on war work.
We've found a smaller room we initially thought might have been a Toilet or Cupboard that looks to be for Optical work, so far we've just cracked the door on this room an poked a mirror in as somethings fell behind the door and we can't get in without getting destructive an while this building is going to be demolished we want to preserve as much as we can an document it as we found it.
There is a lot more I can talk about but I think I've waffled on long enough, but this place is not a gold mine but more of a Gold Plated Solid diomand an ruby encrusted rocking horse shit mine... Me an my friend who called me in have agreeded I can keep anything I want that I can give a value too and anything of historical intrest that needs conservation and if I do sell it he get's 50% of the sales value that i do sell it for + the expenses for me an my apprentice and he also get's his name mentioned as a co-discoverer.
At the moment I am estimating 2 weeks left just packing stuff into box's an crates after that I have about a week ust to empy the place before it get's flattened.
