A Secret Room Found Beneath New Zealand Office

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND—A small, secret room containing some 1,600 nineteenth-century artifacts has been discovered beneath an office block in Christchurch, New Zealand. A ladies’ fob watch, a brooch, mustard pots, cutlery, bottles, and china were among the objects found in the brick room. “The only thing we could think of was that the original house on that site must have been cleared out and everything thrown into a basement and buried and forgotten about,” said archaeologist Katharine Watson. She thinks the house was built after 1877 and demolished by 1916.