>> there's a thing you really wouldn't want to fall on you.
You wouldn't, but in my experience a ceiling weakened by say water doesn't bring the laths down, the plaster detaches from them over a bigger and bigger area (it's visible, but happens very slowly) until something makes it let go. 5lb slabs of abrasive-edged 1840s plaster in our old gaff, a good couple of inches thick... and the ceiling paper, two or three thicknesses, tore unevenly and swung some of those slabs this way and that as they fell. Could hurt or injure anyone below if they were unlucky.
Some of the major internal walls in that house were lath and plaster too. Three layers of plaster with the finest stuff a skim coat on the outside. Sure would like to have seen those Victorian teams of plasterers grafting.
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