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Abandoned Buildings As Time Capsules

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Time to boost this old thread...

First World War tunnels to yield their secrets
By Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:42am BST 26/08/2007

As battle raged across the fields of Flanders, British soldiers found brief respite from the horrors of the First World War in "underground towns" far below the mud and gore. Now, more than 90 years after the armies left and the extraordinary networks of tunnels were flooded, the task of finally revealing their secrets has begun.

The prize, archaeologists and historians believe, is an unprecedented insight into the lives of British troops on the Western Front.

They believe that, because of the absence of light and oxygen in the flooded tunnels, possessions, such as beds, weapons, helmets, clothing and even newspapers, will have been preserved and will be found exactly as they were left in 1918.

After finding the entrances to dozens of miles of tunnels in the countryside near the Belgian town of Ypres, archaeologists and historians last week began extensive surveying work. Robots will then be sent into the tunnels before, eventually, experts from Britain and Belgium hope to pump out the water so that they can venture into the subterranean military towns.

Situated in the middle of the front line between the Germans and the Allied troops, the market town of Ypres was the scene of some of the worst carnage of the First World War. During four years of fighting, the town was almost entirely destroyed and 500,000 soldiers and civilians died in an area of just over nine square miles.

According to the original trench maps, drawn up by British engineers, hospitals, mess rooms, chapels, kitchens, workshops, blacksmiths, as well as rooms where exhausted soldiers could rest, were hewn from the soil, far beneath the water table. Dozens of "fighting tunnels", offshoots which were burrowed under German trenches before being exploded, were also built.

The rooms, connected by corridors measuring 6ft 6in high by 4ft wide, were fitted with water pumps but, when the troops left within weeks of the war ending, they were slowly submerged. Remarkably, during 1917 and 1918, more people lived underground in the Ypres area than reside above ground in the town today.

Peter Barton, a British historian who has been advising the research team, said: "These were basically underground villages and in some of the cases, small towns.

"They haven't been seen since September 1918 when the British attacked and swept the Germans back over this land. Things will be exactly as they were left. This is a unique opportunity. They will be perfectly preserved time capsules.

"The tunnels were left far, far in the rear [as the British soldiers advanced] and within weeks they would have been full of water. So when the Belgians returned, all they would have seen was a little door in a trench full of water."

In recent years, the extensive wartime tunnelling has been the cause of mounting problems for the authorities in Flanders as the timber planks, used to support the labyrinths, began to rot and cave in, causing subsidence.

Dr Tony Pollard, head of Glasgow University's Archaeological Research Division, said: "These are important archaeological sites but they are beginning to subside and collapse. They are becoming a danger to buildings and people so we need to find out more about where they are and how extensive they are."

Initially, experts are concentrating on three locations, and will use scanning equipment to find the main chambers. One network, near the village of Hooge, once housed 1,000 soldiers, while a second, Vampire Dugout, near Zonnebeke, was briefly captured and occupied by the Germans in their last-ditch Spring Offensive in 1918, before being retaken.

The third, Hill 60, which housed up to 3,000 troops, is near Zwarteleen, close to a railway line between Ypres and Menin.

Although some artefacts may eventually be removed from tunnels and handed to the local authorities and on to museums, those in charge of the project - the largest of its kind - intend to leave most in place.

http://tinyurl.com/2n8qj8
 
Firstly, many apologies for the FOAF-style approach, and the geographical limits of the story.
Chatting to a colleague today she mentioned seeing a news item recently on either North West Tonight on the BBC or ITV Granada news about a shop in Manchester that had been boarded-up and left since sometime in the '70's.
Said property had been bought for development and the new owner was astonished to find shelves full of period produce (tinned and dried), along with the original fixtures and fittings including a working cash-register, all left as if the previous owner had shut up shop and walked away thirty years ago.
If anyone has a link to news of this Marie Celeste of the corner shop I'd love a read or a look.
I think the present owner should be arranging tours. I'd welcome the opportunity to buy a properly proportioned Curly-Wurly or some toxic yet efficient scouring powder.
 
I found this...

http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/77968-old-curiosity-shop-treasure-trove.html

Oct 10th, 2008

A shop in Accrington, Lancashire, is just like something from Charles Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop."

The shop has probably been closed since the late 1970s - and all its contents from that time have been left intact.

Stepping into the shop is like stepping back in time.

The shop is full of ancient medicine bottle, and magazines from the Thirties. There is even a bill from 1927 to repair the building at a cost of £36 15s 7d....... [[£36, 15 shillings, 7 pence]] ....... (this was from the good old days before 1971, when Britain's currency was decilmalised, i.e when it simply became 100 pence = £1, just to make it easier for foreigners to understand, rather than using several different divisions of the currency. Before 1971, Britain was unique in using more than two divisions of currency. There were 20 shillings in a £, 12 pence in 1 shilling, and 240 pence to a £. It confused foreigners, though it was quite simple for the British people to understand).

The shop was re-opened this week for safety checks...

Click above link for more and pics.
 
A quick google turns up more:
Store Closed Since ‘52 a Time Capsule of Americana
April 28, 2003 in print edition A-20

The Fifth Avenue Grocery in Roundup closed its doors in 1952, and they stayed closed until late last year. Thousands of items, most of them in mint condition, were locked up for 50 years.

They range from the mundane – bars of soap, tubs of honey and packs of cigarettes – to the rare and valuable – an American Flyer miniature train set with a wind-up locomotive, a souvenir scorecard from the 1929 World Series and an antique Coca-Cola display that hadn’t even been taken out of its wrapper.

Starting Wednesday at an auction house in Billings, the store’s contents will go on sale.

The grocery was owned by Martin and Anna Pluth and eventually was run by Anna and two of her children, Louis and Ann. When their mother died in 1952, Louis and Ann closed the store. Both now have died, and the old grocery finally opened to inspection last year.
....

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/28 ... a-frozen28
A Twickenham time-capsule


The items displayed form only a tiny part of the contents of a Twickenham shop that lay undisturbed for decades: a veritable time-capsule. Sewell’s Stores, Groceries & Provisions, was at 83 Lion Road, Twickenham. The shop closed in 1969 and the contents lay undisturbed for about 25 years until they were kindly donated to The Twickenham Museum by Mrs Bates and Mrs Howe, daughters of Mr Sewell. Mr Sewell had originally acquired the shop in 1925 and some stock from that time remained, as he had stored it in the attic when he took over the business.

The price labels are all in shillings and pence as they are prior to decimalisation in 1971. The books, packets, bottles and tins all still contain their original contents.

Mr Sewell was also a street fire party leader during the Second World War (1939-1945). Once again all the relevant forms, paperwork, and instructions were preserved on his premises, which enables us to see them today. These wartime items include identity cards, arm bands for “Fire Guard” use and even the whistle used to attract attention. In a unique survival, even the “Fire Party” rota for the area of Grove Avenue, Albert Road and Staten Gardens (for March 1945) was preserved and is displayed.
Altogether this material gives us a unique window into aspects of the life of a Twickenham shopkeeper and local people before, during and after the Second World War.

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/tou ... ?TourID=29
2006: Vintage Record Store
by Doug Hanners

Kondoff's Records was located in Miamisburg, Ohio. The store was open from the early 1950's and closed in 1970. As the photos show the contents were frozen in time as no one had been able to buy anything from the store over the past 35 years. It was a true time capsule of music, with LPs, 45s, posters, displays, magazines and much more. - - - Doug Hanners
.....

http://www.austinrecords.com/?gallery/index.htm
There are plenty more out there - they seem to pop up in the local papers here every year or so.
 
If you're ever in Bath, you really MUST visit the Industrial Heretage Centre. It's a fascinating time capsule of Mr Bowler's fizzy drinks factory.
This is the fascinating story of a local family firm. Mr Jonathan Burdett Bowler started his business in Bath in 1872 He described his trade as Engineer, Brass Founder, Gas-fitter, Lock Smith & Bell hanger. He made and repaired soda water machinery and also ran a fizzy drinks factory making such sumptuous concoctions as Orange Champagne, Hot Tom, Bath Punch and Cherry Ciderette.
When Mr Bowler's grandson retired in 1969 the business closed But remarkably it had survived up until then with its original antiquated machinery, Victorian gas light, and nothing remotely useful had ever been thrown away.

Here at Bath Industrial Heritage Centre, Mr Bowler's factory has been saved and lovingly recreated, an intriguing corner of the city's industrial past. Wander through the rooms past the shop counter; through the Dickensian office, to the foundry, the machine shop, the carbonating plant and recall the atmosphere of a bygone age, when Mr Bowler or one of his large family would have tackled any job great or small - repairing a beer engine here, mending a pony harness, casting a replacement part for a newfangled motor car, making gas-lit illuminations for Queen Victoria's Jubilee and, of course, putting the fizz into a myriad sparkling bottles of pop. Aso at Bath Industrial Heritage Centre you will find reconstruction’s of a Bath Stone quarry face and a local cabinet making workshop, both important aspects of the city's history.
 
In Aberystwyth there is a perfectly preserved Victorian shop in the town, complete with lace gloves and other goods.

I also know of a preserved Victorian pharmacy at the tourist attraction of Flambards in Cornwall.
 
Many thanks for all the replies.
Whilst discussing the original post with my colleague we both expressed our surprise that in these days of gentrification and urban regeneration, premises like this could lay fallow for so long.
Now it turns out that they're almost ten-an-old-penny.
Thanks Liveinabin for the link. I'm sure the audio explained why everything was curiously dust-free - the sound's gone on my Mac.
 
2 summers ago they finally cleared out the old "Western Auto" (hardware/automotive store popular in small towns in the US) store in the small town I grew up in. There was so much strange NOS (new original stock) that people flew into Missouri just to try and buy as much as they could in the day-long auction. Vintage hotrod parts, old toys, antique tools, unused advertisements. I ended up buying a really cool deco cash register, a floor buffer that looked like a set decoration from an old sci-fi movie, an early 50's refrigerator, a large 4-tier steel display table and several other kitschy items. I only spent $5.50.
 
Abandoned apartment a relic of east Germany's past
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009 ... 73277.html
Thu, Jan 29, 2009

Leipzig’s answer to the ‘Mary Celeste’ provides a ghostly echo from the period of communist dominance, writes Derek Scally

THE WALL calendar is from 1988, as are the bread rolls in the shopping net. On the kitchen table is a bottle of East German “Hit” cola and “Marella” margarine, on the sideboard some letters and the ID card of a 24-year-old man.

It is Germany’s answer to the Mary Celeste: an apartment abandoned when Leipzig was still in East Germany and completely untouched – until now.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in 20 years of renovating apartments,” said architect Mark Aretz who stumbled upon the 40m square apartment in the Crottendorfer Strasse while renovating the block for its new owners.

“It was completely untouched by the West and smelled of old East German cleaning fluid and brown coal.” It was a very basic apartment even by GDR standards with a melamine-top table, a 1960s washing machine and a 1950s dresser with aluminium cutlery and two potato peelers in the front drawer.

The apartment had no bathroom and the tenant bathed in a zinc tub. Clothes still hung in the wardrobe, bedclothes covered the bed.

The architect declines to name the tenant, but documents found in the apartment suggest he had regular run-ins with the East German authorities and served two jail terms.

In a letter a woman, possibly a sister, writes: “What is it you want in Potsdam? Are you going to start your play-acting again? You might as well register right now for your new prison cell.” “From what he left behind, it’s clear he had no intention of coming back,” said Aretz.

“I gather he refused to toe the line in the GDR and disappeared the first chance he got – some time in late 1988 or early 1989 – when people were fleeing through Hungary or to the West German embassy in Prague.” While some East Germans abandoned their apartments in the months before the Berlin Wall fell, most homes were later reclaimed or had a second life as a squat.

After documenting the contents with a photographer, construction workers moved in to break the 20-year spell in the dusty apartment last occupied when there were two German states.

“The individual items in the apartment weren’t particularly interesting for museums; what was interesting was the untouched ensemble,” said Mr Aretz. “We’ve renovated the apartment for a new tenant, this time with a bathroom.”
 
In a similar vein, I remember reading an article about Sean (son of Errol) Flynn's Parisian apartment being discovered after it had lain undisturbed for decades after his death.
 
WhistlingJack said:
In a similar vein, I remember reading an article about Sean (son of Errol) Flynn's Parisian apartment being discovered after it had lain undisturbed for decades after his death.

Sean disappeared in Cambodian jungle.I don't think his body was ever found.
 
binotaur said:
I'd welcome the opportunity to buy a properly proportioned Curly-Wurly

Yes! It's not just me who thinks we are being short-changed these days by the size of chocolate bars. Penguins are definitely smaller than they used to be. And Creme Eggs.

Back to the shop, how awesome would that be! The only abandoned, boarded up shop in the world that wouldn't be creepy to sneak into.

Love the pics on that link, although I can't help getting the feeling that I'd end up very disappointed by the magazine 'Tit Bits'. :lol:
 
theres one in my town (Congleton) thats been empty since the mid 80's,
the cadbury's stickers are still on the window
its so tempting to do something illegal
:D
 
My quest for a boarded-up 1980s 'Toymaster' with 'Star Wars' and 'He-Man' toys is afoot! Seriously though, under the umbrella of time-capsule shops, how many time-capsules from the 1970s and 1980s, propulgated by 'Blue Peter' and a myriad kids' magazine articles must there be beneath the nation's crazy-paving and topsoil?
 
I loved it when it was posted back in 2008. I thought for a minute there might be another but it looks like the Most Popular tag has struck again.

Never mind. We can't have enough shops frozen in time. But, better look under the counter for the crouching nonces! :)
 
D'oh! It's that old? Sorry about that... Feel free to delete, folks. :(
 
Oh no! It's a good find. :)

A friend, in the 2nd hand book trade, cleared an attic store room above a failed booksellers/stationers. Some of the abandoned stock went back about a hundred years. Things like an amazing selection of original steel pen nibs (boxed), etc. Kept him going for quite a while.
 
Abandoned House with Hardware Shop/Workshop in West Country.

A house of many mysteries. Stock that dates back at least to the early 20th Century. The sinister-looking puppet/lavender-bags hanging in the wardrobe . . . the human hair!

I loved the antique christmas crackers with the pet-scaring graphic on the box lid. Next to them, the indoor-fireworks, which the explorer treats rather casually for old, incendiary chemicals.

Posters underneath point out come other mysteries, such as the flatscreen tv box. One claims to have caught some EVP at the nineteen minute mark. The location is left purposefully vague, though the certificates on the dresser are a clue. :sherlock:
 
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Rachel Lichtenstein's Rodinsky's Room is required reading here. An orthodox jewish recluse living in a room above the synagogue at 19 Princelet Street (Brick Lane, London) went missing in the 60s and – nobody noticed. His room was rediscovered twenty years later. He was a hoarder and had been collecting things since the 30s or so.
 
Rachel Lichtenstein's Rodinsky's Room is required reading here. An orthodox jewish recluse living in a room above the synagogue at 19 Princelet Street (Brick Lane, London) went missing in the 60s and – nobody noticed. His room was rediscovered twenty years later. He was a hoarder and had been collecting things since the 30s or so.

I am shocked to see this book is over twenty years old! I wolfed it down, when I acquired a p/b copy, probably a year or two after its publication in 1999. It was co-authored with Iain Sinclair, so fans of London psychogeography should have it on their mental maps! :reading:
 
An abandoned office and a missing art curator. But there's a twist ...

In Spring 1954, Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) curator of modern art Barton Kestle, whose expertise included Soviet avant-garde printmaking and photography, boarded a train bound for Washington, D.C. to testify in front of Congress about Communist influences in American art. Unfortunately, he never returned to work, and seemed to just disappear.

After some time, the decision was made to board up his office, since nobody had ever heard from him again. His memory faded into obscurity until 2011 when, during museum renovations, workers re-discovered his office, which was still perfectly intact, like a mid-century time capsule. The scene was so well preserved, MIA decided to keep the office as-is and incorporate it into the museum as an exhibit, so that visitors could get a glimpse into what an office from 1954 would have looked like. Atlas Obscura describes the office:

Like all time capsules, the details of the office are mesmerizing. From the water stains beneath Kestle's abandoned rain boots to the early model Polaroid cameras, machines for cutting checks, and an Art-Deco tea cart, everything is exactly as a man would have left things if he were to unexpectedly walk out of his life one day, never to return. It is the perfect portrait of the world of an art curator: all his hopes and dreams, stuffed within the 1950s equivalent of a cubicle.

The office is still on display. A friend of mine recently visited the MIA and viewed the office, and excitedly told me all about the mysterious disappearance of the curator. She also explained how fascinating the office was, complete with cigars and a bar, along with card catalogs galore. I had so many thoughts and questions! How strange it would be to just disappear and have your office boarded up! How long would it take my own colleagues to give up on me coming back, if I went missing? I was intrigued and had to find out more.

So here's what I found—the whole thing is a giant art project, a clever hoax! It's what artist/creator Mark Dion calls "an elaborate fiction." Curator Barton Kestle isn't real—he never existed and never worked for MIA. Dion's piece is called "The Curator's Office" and was created for MIA's 2013 "More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness," where it perfectly fit the theme of the exhibit. After the exhibit, though, MIA decided to keep the office. But without the context of the "Truthiness" exhibit, visitors—like my friend—don't know that Kestle wasn't real and that the room is, instead, an elaborately crafted art display. ...

https://boingboing.net/2024/03/11/the-mysterious-case-of-missing-art-curator-barton-kestle.html
 
Regarding the above mentioned apartment of Sean Flynn;

It was kept intact by his mother Lili Damita, long after he went missing in Vietnam, in hope he might return.
Its interior shows his old man`s lust for adventure as well as his mom`s knack for flair.
A miniature Zaca can be spotted sitting atop the book shelves and a how-to-become-a-photographer manual resides prominently on the kitchen table.
This time capsule`s address was Champs Elysees No. 77.


From an article about the man here;

https://www.theerrolflynnblog.com/category/friends-family/seanflynn/
 
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