Cave-dwellers, really

Every time we have builders in our house (built in 1897) I'm made aware that it's really a cave with a thin veneer. Today the first bits of that veneer were taken away from the (dampish) gable-end wall of the room we in fact live in most of each day, revealing the most nightmarish jumble of stone, mortar (crumbling), brick (the chimney); lathes and ancient plaster that fell and rose in great clouds of dust. We learned that these lathes were all hand-cut, using an axe - who knew? - and realised what a tiny gap was left between the struts and the external wall. The source of the various damp patches was revealed (rubble and 'snot' - a technical term - and a rag left by some careless operative on a previous occasion) and we were assured that indeed, this was a job worth doing.

The pipes in the top right of the photo are reminders of the back boiler which fed into the hot water cylinder in the days when we had one. We even had the fire to heat it, back in the day ...

Should I have chosen to live in a modern house, I wonder?