Domestic archaeology

The current phase of  renovations at Tom and Gemma's flat involve taking down the bedroom ceiling. These dusty items had lain lost and hidden for nearly 80 years ....

Cigarette cards, playing cards, a studio photograph, and ...

... a cinema programme for February 1939. Later that year the Plaza Cinema closed*

This is the ceiling in which these fragments of ephemera languished. Above it is not just the staircase to the two upper flats but also a noisy floor - redoing the ceiling (it was lath and plaster) completely gives a chance to add sound insulation and rewiring -

Those stairs will be concealed in cupboards that will surround the bed and its headboard, and the en suite is almost ready for the fixtures to be installed.

*(Crouch End had another cinema, the Hippodrome, which also suffered bomb damage in WW2 but whose facade still stands.)