Contractor Makes Creepy Discovery While Retiling Old Roof in 1900s House

A contractor’s eerie find while retiling a roof in South London has TikTok users stunned.

Tom Nordemann, co-founder of construction business Touchstone Surrey, was stripping the roof of an Edwardian-era home when he noticed something unusual—small handprints on the back of each tile.

“They look childlike,” a representative for Touchstone Surrey told Newsweek. “We know back in Victorian times kids did work in clay molding, bricks, tiles, etc.”

He shared a video of the haunting discovery online where it quickly went viral, receiving over 880,000 views.

In the clip, Nordemann compares his own hand for scale, guessing the prints belong to children around 7 or 8 years old. The prints are so well-preserved that even the swirls of the fingerprints are still visible.

When he posted the footage on May 19, Nordemann believed the house was from the 1800s. However, he has since learned it is from the early 1900s rather than the Victorian era.

According to the British Library, child labor was commonplace during Queen Victoria’s reign. The average age of children entering the workforce was 10 years old, but children in industrial areas could start as young as 8.

Beginner jobs for working-class kids included factory or millwork, mining, domestic servants, street sellers and rat catchers, with children working for low wages and often in dangerous conditions, according to Victorian Children, a comprehensive Victorian Children history guide.

By the Edwardian era, the situation had improved slightly, with the Education Act of 1888 making it mandatory for children to stay in school until age 14, according to the National Trust for Scotland.

“We’re not historians, but they are very small handprints,” the representative said.

“We looked it up and they were still using these handmade clay tiles at the time, but I don’t know if these were made in England.”

The tiles were removed as part of an extension, with the majority of them being reused to maintain the original aesthetic.

TikTok users were stunned, with FizzyBurp dubbing the find “sad but also fascinating.”

“[A] crazy bit of history,” commented Ambar Rebecca.

“So that’s why all those old houses are haunted,” joked Chas.

“This should go to a museum to educate others,” said pigeon.

“Super cool artifact minus the suuuuuuuuuper awful reasons behind it,” wrote B.

“Don’t know whether to be excited by the find or appalled at the abuse,” agreed ruf100.

“Utterly heartbreaking over the size of the hands,” said b.

“It’s horrible to think of what they went through,” commented ABH2017. “But amazing pieces of history that have survived.”

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