Boggy Basement 2006

Today’s post falls on my father’s birthday. And having just returned from a ceremonious luncheon commemorating the occasion, I’m feeling more attuned and sympathetic to chronology than usual. Typically happy to ping-pong haphazardly through our 18-1/2 years at Rosslyn, I’ll instead endeavor to honor time. This boggy basement post offers a glimpse exactly 18 years old today. In terms of sequence it should follow directly after these three posts:

• Living Room South Elevation, Now & Then
• Sunken Living Room, Now & Then
• Morning Room De-flooring, Now & Then

Let’s start with the boggiest area of the boggy basement, at least as far as we knew on December 28, 2006. This photo below shows a masonry “well” filled by an enormous exterior, in-ground cistern (previously located just north of today’s morning room.)

So long as there was water in the cistern, gravity ensured this handy delivery system for water in the 1800s. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of several reasons that the ell had endured catastrophic water, mold, and rot damage over the centuries. Located in the middle of what is now our wine cellar, remediating this once clever precursor to municipal freshwater became a priority.

But the exterior cistern that filled the indoor “well” hole in our future wine cellar was only one of our water problems.

The boggy basement beneath the living room (really more of a crawlspace than a basement in those early days) had two additional gravity fed cisterns. Although these indoor water storage tanks constructed of stone and lined with plaster (white still visible in some of the photographs) had largely been broken up prior to our ownership, we would soon learn while excavating the dirt floors that extensive terra-cotta piping delivered and endless amount of water from a collection system long forgotten but located somewhere uphill guaranteeing a perennially boggy basement. And mega colonies of mold. And a LOT of rot.

Almost two decades later it’s difficult to believe that our wine cellar and gym / fitness room once looked like this! But I’m getting ahead of myself…