Trapped in the darkness, a small team of renovators thought their lives were over until they found a mysterious object that led them to something even better than safety.
Not Your Grandma’s Chimney
This archaic chimney plagued an assisted living home in Aberdeen, Scotland for far too long. In addition to being a complete eyesore, the chimney shaft itself started spitting ash and tar onto the floor, this was an immediate threat to the health of those living in the home.
Anything Would Help
The assisted living home needed more than just the chimney done. Their funding had been cut incrementally every year leading up to this, while the damages to their property worsened. In an actual life and death scenario, this old folks home was scrambling to find anyone who would help them out. Fortunately, there were some brave souls out in their town that were willing to help…
Not an Easy Job
The old folks home contacted every local agency they could find, begging for a reduced price that was almost unfeasible. So many companies declined, wishing them the best, but just not being able to squeeze such a big project for such little money.
Volunteers to the Rescue
Some very talented folks from the city nearby heard about their plight, so they banded together to help these lovely people out. Such a heart-warming way to open the story. The only problem, some of these people weren’t incredibly experienced, and this was a very difficult task…
Getting Down To It
Before the renovators arrived, they hired a few inspectors to check out the place and see what work needed to be done to bring the place up to code. First things first, the group of volunteers paid for the old folks to be sent to a nice hotel for the period they would be working on the place!
Not Looking So Hot
The inspectors found that the building was borderline uninhabitable. They were shocked that the plumbing and electricity still functioned, and they were aghast that people had been living under these conditions for so long. They theorized that they might have to tear down the walls and start the whole place over until someone came up with a brilliant idea…
The Saving Grace
The brick on the outside was the newest part of the whole building, and the reason the place was actually standing. The workers theorized that they could work around the walls completely, not disturbing the people who lived there, or taking a long time to return them to their normal lives.
Starting at the Top
The volunteers decided that starting on the roof would be their best bet. Once they get the roof secured, they wouldn’t have to worry about anything caving in when they worked on the rest of the house. Once they made their first crack at it, they realized something was off about this place…
What Was it There for?
The chimney that they pulled off wasn’t connected to the rest of the house. How could that be? Puzzled, they decided to put the pieces of the chimney aside and work on what was around them. Fortunately for them, the ceiling did not give way, despite having an out of place unsafe shaft.
So Much Potential
After digging into the roof of the house, the volunteers found some very strange, uninhabited portions of the house that were previously furnished. This was a huge building with no particular history, so this was kind of expected, but definitely not to this magnitude. After exploring this room, you wouldn’t believe what the workers found.
Breaking Ground
This haunting shot depicts one of the rooms in the building. Everything had been dormant for easily half a decade, and the room was covered in a thick layer of dust mixed with ash from the chimney.
A Deep History
This house had barely any records available, but it became apparent that someone with a good amount of money lived here, potentially in secret. The paintings on the walls were incredibly ornate. The molding looked expensive. But, there were a few things that stood out vastly from others…
Getting to the Bottom of it
Once the secret rooms were discovered, the team had a better idea where that empty chimney shaft led to, although they couldn’t quite find the source immediately. Kinda strange for a group of people hired to fix a chimney to have such a problem, something bigger must have been going on.
Finding Their Way Back
The workers navigated themselves back to the chimney shaft, determined to find the source of their confusion. They dropped a torch down the shaft, and it went out when it hit the bottom. This confused the small team of people that were on the roof. The workers leaned over and peered down in the hole as close as they could get…
Rooting it Out
The workers found a long drain snake, one that used to unclog pipes. In order to get a better idea of what was down there, the group used the snake to try and feel around where they couldn’t see.
Don’t Test Your Luck
The renovators dug the rooter in deeper and got it caught on something close to the bottom. This broke, and the two workers holding the snake fell into the chimney, at first, nobody could hear them crying for help…
The Helping Hand
The one volunteer left on the roof sprung into action, assuming that his friends didn’t die, based on the length of their fall. He knew they probably weren’t very injured, but quite possibly could be knocked out, struggling for oxygen in the sealed tunnel.
Get Me Out
Thanks to the brave workers quick thinking, help came right in the nick of time. He was right, the volunteers who fell in the shaft were not injured, but they were struggling for air. The roof was compromised, and they had to get them out quickly before they suffocated…
Some Great Ideas
The rest of the volunteer crew acted quickly. Avoiding the parts of the roof that were questionable, they assembled a team to send ropes down into the chimney to hopefully pull up their friends, lo and behold it worked.
A Gift from the Chimney
When the workers came to the top, they were clutching a bundle that had been hidden down in the chimney shaft. They found it tucked away in a corner, wrapped in cotton to protect it. They had no clue what this could possibly have been…
Re-Inspection
After taking a closer look, the fireplace was designed to divert smoke and heat away from where this object was hidden. The crew chose to wait to open it, for the sake it was fragile, or possibly if it was a murder weapon in a crime, stashed away to avoid an accusation.
Shipping and Handling
The workers dropped what they were doing for the day, and packaged the bundle in a box they had from their supplies. They brought the package to an antique museum that was equipped to handle these kinds of artifacts without damaging them.
Breaking into it
Inside the cloth there appeared to be an object, but wait… The cloth itself had a very strange pattern stitched into it. It was a map!! Not just a map, but one that was so old that it fused to the binding around it. If the volunteers opened it on the job site it certainly would have been destroyed for good.
A Detailed Map Indeed
The entire map was hand drawn, very ornate, and embossed with family symbols, and displays of wealth. Whoever owned this map definitely had some cash.
Dimensionally Impressive
When the museum started working on it, they found that the map was over 7 feet long, and led to a place that no longer existed. The museum simply called it “the Chimney Map.”
Wildey’s Maps
The museum concluded that this was a map made by the famous London cartographer, George Wildey. In fact, this map could have been up to 400 years old based on his lifetime!
The Work of Many
Wildey had collaborated with two other Spanish map makers to create this piece. It was more of an aesthetic map, a status symbol that cost lots of money, mostly owned by the richest of the rich.
Computerized Restoration
This is a software generated restoration of what the map could have looked like, had we been able to see it in its glory days.
Restorative Property
As more museums caught word of this artifact, larger teams of people were brought in to restore the work. Turns out, it was far more beautiful than they previously expected.
Taking a Tour
This map spent a long time in the Philadelphia History Museum until it was retired into an archive collection of ancient maps. Guess this just goes to show, sometimes you gotta fall down a chimney to find some of the world’s most incredible artifacts.