Is this true?

[Booldawg]

I remember someone telling me that 100s years ago it was customary that when you built a house it was customary to bury someone alive under the door step. Think it related to Anglo-Saxon times.

[anneasquith]

alive ? surely not,

[New2Quizzes]

We've all been tempted when salesmen knock! Can we revive the custom ...?

[pastafreak]

Not sure about that....but dead cats were buried in walls to ward off evil,if I'm not mistaken.

[Whickerman]

I've heard of this and will try find a reference at some stage where I've more time (I think it was infants).

In the meantime, if you're interested, look up Anchorites - religious who withdraw from society, usually through having themselves walled up!

[jake-the-peg]

I do know that when we refurbished the floor in our house (1680s) we found a 2d coin at each corner.

Could be a derivative of an earlier custom

[askyourgran]

I believe they were lares (household gods) these were small clay artefacts that were buried under the front doorway to protect the home. I think there was also a small shrine somewhere in the house to make offerings. This was an ancient custom Greek or Roman.

[ChuckFickens]

I think its unlikely that there was ever a tradition where somebody had to be effectively murdered every time a house was built!

[woofgang]

In the Mary Renault books about Merlin and Arthur, Merlin brings the Kingstone back from Ireland and sets it at Stonehenge. He buries Ambrosius under it and the book says "makes it a safe castle for all England" Not sure where she got the idea from

[sandyRoe]

I remember reading that when the great mediaeval cathedrals were being built a child would be buried alive in the foundations.

[mike11111]

I have never come across that one. The Church, for all its deficiencies, would never countenance the killing of a child. A woman, sentenced to death, would not be executed if she were pregnant until after giving birth.

[Mosaic]

Excavations in England and examinations of some more recent buildings have shown animals buried in wall spaces and under thresholds, or under hearths. Very ancient sites in Orkney have yielded ancestor burials under the floors of large dwellings - these seem to have been 'excoriated' by the time they were buried ie they were already skeletons when re-buried under the floor.
Cats are occasionally found stuffed into wall spaces, and larger critters like calves or lambs under floors, even in buildings dating to only 500 years ago. You can alos find phallic-shaped stones built into parts of buildings. However, there doesn't seem to be evidence for a practise of burying people alive under floors.
So I think what you have heard perhaps contains elements of folk magic / sympathetic magic - but if this was something that you believed in, if you were a Saxon or a Neolithic farmer, would you want the fairly annoyed spirit of someone you'd stuck under the lounge floor bothering you in your dreams?

[dotty.]

only on Brookside, Booldawg, it's a scouse tradition I believe : )

[Mosaic]

I thought it was a popular weekend activity in Gloucester till Fred West got arrested.......

[jake-the-peg]

There are "witch bottles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_bottle these were often buried under floors in fireplaces etc.

[Harry_Hedgehog]

Still very common with inner city gangs.

[johninlongmont]

that is creepy

[123everton]

I think sacrifices like that were widespread during the Chinese Shang dynasty, one of the few benefits of the foundling Qin dynasty was the ending of it, hence the terracotta warriors.

[Booldawg]

thanks all to contributed! made a very interesting read. LOL it was one of those questions that I'd posted in a hurry, switched off PC and totally forgot I'd posted it.