On the beach below my in-laws' garden is this old engine block. It's been there as long as I've been walking that beach, almost fifty years.

Finally yesterday I took its picture. The block is about a metre long.

Today I asked the Great Untrustworthy One, Google's AI, what it is.

For what it's worth, Google AI said it was the block from a 1927-1934 Ford Model A or Model B motorcar, an engine type that was often remodeled into small boat engines. That was probably this one's fate. Intermediate fate.

I suspect that, thrown down on the beach, it was ultimately used as a weight anchoring a rope to a nearby moored fishing boat.

No one fishes from this beach anymore.