Mystery Iron plate low on wall - any ideas?

[MLPem]

I have a mid-60s-build house in the UK, at the front of the property at (spanning) the Damp proof course level, there's a small metal cover plate (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 in the street have it. All the houses had flue chimneys that could take a proper 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). 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 (link-detached house). So I've casually ruled out it being anything to do with maintaining the flue.

No services join into the house anywhere near this location

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

This is on the front wall of the house, with nothing on the opposing wall of the house

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

 

[noseall]

I have a mid-60s-build house in the UK, at the front of the property at (spanning) the Damp proof course level, there's a small metal cover plate (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 in the street have it. All the houses had flue chimneys that could take a proper 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). 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 (link-detached house). So I've casually ruled out it being anything to do with maintaining the flue.

No services join into the house anywhere near this location

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

This is on the front wall of the house, with nothing on the opposing wall of the house

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

View attachment 317635

Looks like an old soot door.

Do you have a back boiler?

 

[MLPem]

Looks like an old soot door.

Do you have a back boiler?

Thanks for the suggestion noseal.

Would it be a soot door that far away from the place the fire was? I figured soot doors would be behind the chimney or have direct access to a soot tray or the flue itself? I don’t know about this stuff though!

It wasn’t a back boiler when we moved in, but cant rule out it not being back in the day. It was just a decorative gas fire for heating the room when we moved in.
There is, interestingly(?) a sort of channel cast into the concrete sub floor that ran past the fireplace and goes off in both directions, looked like it could have been covered in ply and then a skim put on top (I think this was done later in the houses life and before we moved in) but I only discovered it when we took the old fireplace and chimney out and wanted to cap the gas pipe which seemed to be routed in it - maybe this was where a set of flow/return pipes would have been or maybe some other service? Not sure but I don’t know anything about Back Boiler systems so maybe it’s related?

The channel does run (I think around the edge of the room and past the wall where this plate is on the other side.

Sorry for the ramble, and thanks again for chipping in

 

[noseall]

There is, interestingly(?) a sort of channel cast into the concrete sub floor that ran past the fireplace and goes off in both directions,

Sounds like an old Baxi air (breather) vent.

 

[^woody^]

Any cast plates like that are typically fire or flue related, and access for cleaning.