Molar that was discovered in attic of Blickling Hall is thought to date from second world war

The National Trust is appealing for information about a human tooth that has turned up alongside Jacobean furniture and old masters during the annual winter cleaning of a stately pile.

The badly decayed molar, still with small scraps of flesh attached, was found in an attic cabinet at Blickling Hall, former home of the Boleyn family whose most famous member, Anne, lost her head in 1536 on the orders of King Henry VIII.

The tooth is thought to be much more recent than Anne's Tudor days, prompting the trust's hopes that its former owner, or a relative, may have information about home dentistry or possibly a fight at the mansion in Norfolk. The trust's regional archaeologist, Angus Wainwright, said today: "Perhaps there was a servants' brawl or maybe an airman lost a tooth when the RAF took the hall over during the second world war."

The tooth's owner was a stranger to modern dentistry, with a large hole in one side of the molar and a honeycomb of small cavities throughout. Wainwright said: "They would have suffered a huge amount of pain, which lends some weight to the extraction theory."

Air force dentists attended staff billeted at Blickling, although the cheap alternative of tying a loose tooth to a doorknob and slamming the door was a common remedy in the 1940s. Wainwright said: "The tooth is in a very bad condition indeed. We've found lots of interesting things in the Blickling attics before now but this has to got to be the weirdest."

Scientific dating tests are likely to be applied to the tooth, although removal from a burial has already been ruled out. Wainwright said: "It has never been buried in the ground because you can see some of the red mush still present, so I'd say it was probably lost right here in the attics."

The tooth will go on display when Blickling reopens at the end of February.

Louise Green, assistant house steward at Blickling, said: "We're just really interested to know where it came from and why it's ended up in our attic."