I second Ian Evans suggestion the wooden tongs might have been a  concealment 
feature, although the function of the object being concealed is part  of why 
it was concealed. For example, cats and chickens were concealed to keep  down 
vermin; bent coins were to hold in wealth; broken or bent knives and  scissors 
were to keep out evil; bottles of pins in urine were to keep out evil  
spirits or magic; bottles of mercury were to keep out "witches"; shoes and boots  
were to grow mirror spirits of the original wearer to protect future residents  
in their sleep. Thus, you have to ask what laundry tongs would have done for 
the  future residents? A more simple possibility is that some drudge stashed 
the  hated tongs in the hopes of getting reassigned to a less oppressing task.
 
In case someone comes up with the burial pits or bottles in foundations or  
coins between the bricks to explain the tongs, those features were  vestigial 
"appeasement" features to the spirits (formerly gods in  pre-Christian times) 
of the earth. Roman belief followed that before people  arrived, gods owned 
trees, earth, boulders, and streams and humans needed to  intercede for 
permission to use said resources. Burial pits full of coins,  precious metals, or 
inverted bottles of wine were sacrificed before construction  of Roman houses. In 
later centuries, people simply poured wine or beer in the  foundation and left 
the bottle. by the end of the 19th century and really up to  the present, 
builders and masons will insert a coin in the walls of a house "to  keep with 
custom." In Wales and some parts of Ireland, horse skulls were  buried under 
floors of houses and barns to appease earth spirits and  protect the occupants. 
Skeptics (ie. archaeologists and historians) of these  practices need only 
inquire of Welsh museums to find there is an active program  of recording 
discoveries of horse skulls, pots of coins, and bottles in  foundations as 
archaeological features. In all probability, those hoards of  coins found in agricultural 
fields we keep hearing about over in England  were probably once underneath 
Roman houses that have long disintegrated.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.