Behind the loosened section, we didn’t find a note, a key, or a hidden stash of coins.
We found gears.
Real, metal, perfectly preserved mechanical gears tucked inside a 150-year-old stair post.
We just stared at them.
Were they part of a hidden lock? A trigger? Some kind of mechanism that connected to something else in the house?
For a few minutes, our quiet farmhouse stopped being a home and turned into a puzzle – like we had slipped into a Victorian detective novel and the house had just handed us a clue.
We started digging into the history and discovered something surprising: hollow newel posts were actually a thing.
In the Victorian era, the chunky post at the end of the staircase wasn’t always solid. Sometimes it was deliberately hollowed out and used as a hiding place – for deeds, jewelry, cash, or small valuables.
Banks weren’t always reliable or nearby, so people got creative. A staircase post was the perfect spot: always in plain sight, rarely questioned, and under your nose every day.
But our post didn’t just have an empty cavity. It had gears – which meant someone, at some point, hadn’t just wanted a hiding place.
They wanted a mechanism.
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