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I have a mid-60s house in the UK, at the front of the property at spanning DPC level there's a small metal cover (approx. dimensions are 1 brick wide and two bricks tall). None of the neighbours seem to know what it is for, and I can't remove it to see what it is covering.

Does anyone know what it might be from your previous experience. All the houses have it. All the houses had traditional flue chimneys that could take a coal fire, so maybe it's something to do with that, but I am not sure. Its on the outside wall of the front room that contained the fireplace (chimney and fireplace are long since removed; there were no signs of a channel going in that direction when it was removed)

There are no markings on it, it feels like it might be iron, I can't see any fixings, and it doesn't budge (by hand - I am nervous of encouraging it with something heavier until I know what it might be).

The floors inside are poured concrete, so I don't think it's an airway; there're no other air bricks or anything like that on the property

Edit for additional clarity: The house is link detached, where the garage of one house shares the ground floor wall of the next house, and so on. The item pictured is not attached to the same wall as where the chimney and fireplace were, and is positioned underneath a window around 3 meters diagonally away on an adjacent wall. The fireplace was on the same wall that joined the neighbours garage. This is on the front wall of the house, with nothing on the opposing wall of the house (some suggestions it may be a tie plate, but I don't think its one of those)

Appreciate any wisdom you might be able to throw at it!

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Steve Melnikoff
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Max
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I'm with brhans - I think it was a clean out for the fireplace. We had something very similar on the house I grew up in (USA) on the wall outside the fireplace.

You might want to contact the local historical society to see if they've got any documentation on the houses when they were built new. They might even have floor plans which would show that this was the location of the fireplace. If the houses in your neighborhood are all the same, they might even have the architectural drawings that were used for construction that would confirm exactly what it was for.

FreeMan
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A solid-fuel fire needs a fresh air supply, because the flow up through the chimney needs a compensating inlet. This blocks off what would originally have been a grating (which might still be behind it). Without the inlet, there would have been a draught, probably around the door from the hall into this room.

This should have led under the floor, with smaller gratings in the floor on each side of the hearth, so the cold air from outside does not go through the main part of the room.

Paul_Pedant
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Could easily be wrong, but it looks like a welded tie plate to me.

So the flat bar in the middle would run through the building and there would typically be a matching plate on the other side of the building. Old ones tend to be fancy nuts on threaded rods. This looks like you'd have a plate with a hole for the bar in it, and your welder comes along and welds the bar in place, then your painter paints it.

Ecnerwal
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