Homeowners: did any of you discover your new place had a surprise feature AFTER moving in?

lincroft1710

[EDITED BY FORUM TEAM]


The only thing I ever found buried in a garden was a small plastic toy galleon!


But a future owner of my parents' first house may well have found a Land Rover driver buried in the garden!


I lost the "driver" from my Dinky Toy Land Rover somewhere in the garden, but despite searching for several hours. never found him. 

annabanana82

When pulling the old fence out we found we had an extra 2 foot of garden as the previous occupants put a fence up to hide years of rubbish. 
We found a bed frame, crutches, washing up bowls breeze blocks, a childs plastic kitchen as well as other plastic toys, Bike wheels, large stones, chicken wire, plastic coated rolls of wire, huge amounts of metal, wood and lots of rubbish besides. 

I know someone that for years threw their empty whisky bottles over the garden wall so his wife wouldn't realise just how many bottles he got through. 
Years later it came back to bite as they purchased the piece of land to add to their garden and his wife found the 80+ empty bottles, he had replaced the lids so no dead rodents

Racky_Roo

Sticking my head into the loft of my old flat I saw some feet with black shoes on sticking out of a bin bag. I was petrified it was a dead body (flat had been rented before I bought it) So I sent my Dad up to investigate, only to find it was a Halloween figure which stood about 5 foot tall. It had a motion sensor for when people walked by and when activated, it lifted its head off and played creepy music. My Dad loved it and took it home and puts it out every Halloween for the kids.

MovingForwards

A secret garden which housed a large patio, it's no longer hidden but a lovely space to sit. Found loads are garden tools dotted around, which have been useful as the entire garden was transformed.

Inside was the usual feather duster, spare wallpaper, naff art, part used varnish tin, sock dryer thing, extinguisher etc. Some got binned, some given away and some have come in handy.

Titus_Wadd

My first house purchase we discovered a "raised bed" was actually a 1metre high mound of used cat litter along the length of the back garden wall.  We had no transport so had to bag it in rubble sacks and appeal to friends with cars to drop it at the tip.  There's only so many times you can ask a person to drive a couple of miles and handle the smelliest sacks.  We thought the executors had recently weeded the border; I wonder whether that flowerbed was ever fit to grow anything?  The cat was 17 and passed away shortly after its owner; that's a long life-time dump!

I swear if I take a really deep breath I can still smell the ammonia like a blast of smelling salts from 35 years ago!

It wasn't all bad we also found a Clarice Cliff jug and Suzy Cooper complete dinner service with the largest meat platter I have ever seen...great for a big turkey.

Great idea for a thread OP!

Three years ago we bought our dream house only to find we live next door to a thug and a sociopath (I don't generally bandy around metal health labels but this guy has been diagnosed or profiled or whatever the process is). 

I really wish I had all that used cat litter to dump on his property...if only I'd known! 

Thrugelmir

Soot2006 said:

Not very exciting, but I found a large pond in the middle of what I thought was a thickly planted bed of shrubs. It's a big garden, but I was quite surprised I hadn't noticed it on viewings.

In our current property after removing the derelict greenhouse. We found that it was built on railway sleepers. Until the sleepers there was a patio. Beneath that an old filled in pond.  

Had to get someone in to break up the remains of the base of the Anderson shelter that had simply been filled in. 

Ashworks

When we stripped the wallpaper in our first house we found 'graffitti' from the couple who had lived there from the 1950s  (they left it to their neighbour whom we bought it from). They wrote their names in a heart, the year 1959 and some other messages. We showed it to the neighbour and took photos before adding our own message under the new paper. As a young couple we took it as a good omen!

Davesnave

annabanana82 said:

When pulling the old fence out we found we had an extra 2 foot of garden....
I know someone that for years threw their empty whisky bottles over the garden wall so his wife wouldn't realise just how many bottles he got through. 
Years later it came back to bite as they purchased the piece of land to add to their garden and his wife found the 80+ empty bottles, he had replaced the lids so no dead rodents

It was the other way around at our old house. Removing a huge hedge about 7' thick, we discovered a rear neighbour had relocated part of the retaining wall and rebuilt it, giving themselves a pedestrian rear access. We had no evidence regarding when this had happened, so we let it go.

When we moved, that part of the garden was sold to the neighbour, so they ended-up buying it anyway.

walwyn1978

When we did viewings we noticed that one side of the back garden was a mass of 8-10 feet high dead trees. When we moved in, we cut them down and ground out the stumps - to find that behind the trees we had a log shed full of seasoned wood, a path down one side of the house and two old pushbikes, none of which had been mentioned on the EA blurb, on the photos or visible when we did any of our viewings. 

The neighbours on that side were thrilled when we did that. The log shed is still in use 8 years on! 

FreeBear

Got an old septic tank in the garden that a previous owner had filled with empty wine & spirit bottles. Now that the property is on mains sewers, the tank is currently used as a soakaway for rain water.

As for the patio & driveway, I'm keeping quiet. The next owner will have to dig down very deep to find anything