On 5 Aug, 10:36, wrote:
Hi

I've just discovered a cellar. It's about 2.5m x 3.0m with a vaulted
ceiling and a stone staircase leading up into the house. The ceiling
height at present is over 2.0m, but I suspect if I dig down I will
find a flagstone floor. It's still limewashed, and there are a few
iron hooks on the ceiling.

I'd like to restore it, but I'm concerned that I'm breaking so many
regulations renovating my house that reinstating a cellar might just
get me into an altogether new realm of trouble if I get caught.

Any ideas what to do with it? I quite fancy a small area where the
wife can practice the violin without me having to go outside!

T

Dear Tom
FWIIW I suggest you do the following:
Accpet the manna (sp?) gratefully and put the cellar to the sort of
use that was intended for it when it was first built. this is likely
to be storage (wine or coal depending on its age) but if you want to
upgrade to modern standards be very, very careful how you do it.
I take it that the building is not listed from your reponses to
comments - that is good. I share with Nat Phil the veiw that the last
thing you do is to list it if you can avoid it. Listing is a good
thing in general but is dependent on the whim of the local
conservation officers who vary in competence and understanding from
the plainly obsenely, incompentent purists with no practical
understaning to the very good but in my experience there are more in
practice who tend to the former than the latter description and it is
quite common to find them disagreeing with each other let alone the
BCO!
Do not be tempted to try to make the cellar water proof by tanking -
it will merely cause water to go different routes and maybe in walls
that you do not want it to go! Do, however, introduce subfoor
ventilation (if necesary by excavating a subfoor tube( to get through-
ventilation. Do put in an ISOLATED timber (tanalised) floor if you
want to store things ( or simply some sheet poly?) but bear in mind it
will not be vented and thus is at risk if you have cut any ends of
treated timber. It would be good to reinstate access from inside but
if you do so make sure any staircase is also isolated. Seems to me the
best use you could make of it is to store wine or any non-cellulosic
material.
Chris