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By Rachael O'Connor
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A couple who found a strange bricked-up room hidden in the cellar of their home were shocked to discover what was buried inside.
Luisa, 34, lives in Sheffield in the United Kingdom, and lived the dream when she discovered their pre-1900s house was sitting on a goldmine.
Back in 2020—when everyone had plenty of free time thanks to the pandemic—Luisa and her husband Dan noticed a bricked-up wall under the steps to their cellar, and became determined to find out what was behind it.
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Dan "found tons of coal" in the hidden room, already a great find—but once he had finally finished bagging up the coal, he realized "there was an unusual paint tin beneath it all."
"He put it to one side for months, and we were nervous about opening it as it smelled like ammonia," Luisa told Newsweek.
But eventually, they decided to open it with their kids for a bit of excitement.
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It proved to be a moment none of them would forget, even as Luisa joked that, in hindsight, it may not have been "the best idea to open a rusty old mystery tin that smells of ammonia in front of kids."
A video posted to her TikTok account @scruffyandsorted showed the moment the family opened the tin, which was damp and covered in rust.
Inside was something wrapped in paper, and as they managed to open it—carefully, and using tools instead of their hands—they realized that it was stacks and stacks of money.
The bills, all made up of £5 ($6.68) notes, came up to more than £1,000 ($1,336), and dated back to the 1970s.
Luisa told Newsweek: "None of us were expecting money inside. It was such a fantastic memory for the kids, they will remember it forever."
She explained that they dried the money out, and before taking it to the bank, played a game of Monopoly with the unexpected windfall.
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And, she said, they "couldn't have found it at a better time," as Luisa was temporarily out of work due to the pandemic.
"It was nice to treat the kids a bit and catch up on any bills," she said. "It took some stress off us for a few weeks."
Luis and Dan's house is over a century old, which is common in the United Kingdom.
The majority of England's housing stock was built before 1919, according to data from Statista—a big difference to the United States, when the median year most homes in the country were built was 1979.
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Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Emma Lee-Sang
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