Jess Battison
Unless you’ve got a bit of a thing for the darker side of life, no one really likes to ponder the murky history of their home.
Look, it’s important to know how we got where we are today and to know about the backgrounds of the places we make our own. But at the same time, it’s not exactly fun to imagine someone suffering in the same place you’re trying to binge Netflix.
And it turns out there could literally be signs of that hidden in your walls or right above your head.
A builder in Surrey was working with Touchstone construction company when he made a chilling discovery.
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Tomas Nordemanoski took to Instagram when he found a child’s handprint imprinted on the back of roof tiles – and he’s got a disturbing theory behind it.
He racked up millions of views as he noticed each tile coming off the roof had a little handprint on it.
Now, if you were ever about annoying your parents while they were decorating the house as a kid, they might have let you do a pattern or write your name on a wall before painting over it. But Tomas’ theory isn’t quite as sweet as that.
He reckons that the handprints could have been made by a kid of ‘no more than seven’ years old.
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The builder says in the video: “Stripping this old Victorian tile roof and we've found that all the tiles have got little kids’ handprints from back in the Victorian days.
“Kids used to make these.”
And that’s based on the theory that children were making the tiles in the Victorian era before child labour was eventually abolished.
In the UK, there wasn’t legislation restricting kids under 14 being used in employment until 1933 – less than a century ago.
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Tomas even placed his own hand against the prints, saying: “Look that's the palm, fingertips, for scale look. That is no more than a seven-year-old. Seven- or eight-year-old.
“All the tiles are the same look; you can even see the fingerprint swirls. Fun fact, tiles were made by Victorian kids.”
But not everyone in the comments were in agreement as they suggested that men’s hands and feet ‘were much smaller’ in those times, as another said the prints ‘shrink in the kiln’.
As one echoed: “It should be noted that earthenware clay shrinks while drying, and then again when fired, sometimes up to 20 percent.
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“So a finished 16cm piece could have been 20cm when freshly made. Same for those handprints. So maybe nine-year-olds, rather than six or seven-year-olds.”