[URY914]

I have a house built in 1955 and at the front and back doors, I have soffits that are covered with tongue and groove 6" pine boards. The boards are original 1955 material and are dried out and beginning to split and buckle and the nails are badly rusted to the point of failing. Last week one a board about 4’ long actually fell out. This gave me the opportunity to remove a few of the boards and look at the “attic” space above the kitchen. My roof has about a 2 in 12 pitch and my so called “attic” has only about 18” between the top of the ceiling joists and the bottom of the roof joists at the highest point. I was able to look above kitchen ceiling, and I have virtually no insulation of any kind. This was not a big surprise and is what I expected. The mystery is when I removed the soffit boards there was small rock pebbles, a lot of pebbles that fell out of the soffits. See the pictures. I can’t figure out where they would have come from. They are completely random and not like they were grouped together by some animal. When I would pry a board down about 50 of these rocks would come raining down too. The mystery is where did they come from and if the original builder put them there, why would they do that? Any ideas?