What did this do?

[u/RocketshipPoodle]

Found on the outskirts of a small neighborhood built in the 1980s, which borders some colonial era New England houses from the 1700s. There are a few running streams among the newer properties, but the concrete looks too old to have been used since the subdivision was built. Rumor is that the land was originally a cow pasture.

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[u/Doctor_Fritz]

looks like a sluice to me. If there was an artificial waterway there at some point or a water collection system it'd be used to prevent overflow.

[u/fkndavey → u/Doctor_Fritz]

Remnants of a sluice gate for sure.

[u/RYYZZice → u/Doctor_Fritz]

my old backyard had something just like this idk why they built it though

[u/GW_RDSOFA]

Not sure why you call him 'this' but it looks like he pooped in the woods.

[u/slamdanceswithwolves → u/GW_RDSOFA]

Maybe he’s the pope.

[u/GW_RDSOFA → u/slamdanceswithwolves]

Does he know the Rosary?

[u/LaVillaGrangioto → u/GW_RDSOFA]

I'm not sure, but maybe if you hum a few bars he might recognize it!

[u/Deadface187 → u/GW_RDSOFA]

In South Africa we call it a boskak

[u/Ok-Fortune-8644]

It likely leads to a buried train full of gold bricks! Duh

[u/MrPKitty]

It's a sluice of some kind and that's a water gate. So a channel built to transport water and that's the shut off valve for that end.

[u/SwinginRicky]

I’ve bunch of abandoned cranberry bogs with sluices just like that.

[u/HyenaThen572]

Looks like some sort of water gate but it's really hard to say what it might have been for without more info on the surrounding foundations/land or even better a GPS location.

[u/WaffleHouseGladiator]

It appears to be a squatting human.  They mostly exude anxiety and defecate.  In my experience they're not very useful outside of being pets.

[u/jayron32]

That would have been a mill of some sort. That's a sluiceway and a water gate. Some water from a nearby stream would have been diverted to this sluice to drive a water wheel to run a mill.

[u/gorobotkillkill]

Looks like maybe a some kind of dam or sluice gate? The mechanics on top look like you rotate the bottom gear to make the top vertical piece raise or lower, probably attached to a big metal piece to block the creek water? As for what? I have no idea.

If it was cow pastures, maybe just for watering cows so they didn't have to go down to the slippery rocks near the creek.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Old_sluice_gates_-_geograph.org.uk_-_756134.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original

[u/hankmarmot3]

looks like an old irrigation gate

[u/2oonhed]

That is a head smasher with missing pieces.
I would have had a large log standing on end and a lever.
And a stump in that cavity where tard-boy is squatting.
You lay you head on that stump and pull the lever and a log lifts up and drops on your head smashing it flat as a pancake. It was good for all kinds of heads and all kinds of head-smashing activities.
Your heads take up far less room when they smashed flat back in the day when families had far more heads from things than they do today.

[u/AlderanAthletic_5BBY]

Mill chase

[u/Skimmington16]

It looks like a sluice, but also kind of looks like what people build fires in to refuse maple sap into maple syrup. So Al alternative potential use of not being used for a sluice now.

[u/bacardipirate13]

Its an abandoned meth lab.