I lived in a home at the corner of 21st and Market streets in Louisville, KY that had stood since the 1790's. You entered the cellar to the home through a trapdoor in the floor of the bedroom closet in the back of the home. The floor was brick with three cellar walls of old stone and one of new brick.
I asked the landlord why there was a new brick wall in the old cellar and he informed me that it covered a tunnel that went down to the sewer and it had been a "station" on the underground railroad.
The reason he had erected the new wall was to keep rats from the sewer from coming up into the cellar and getting into the house.
I suspect the noises you heard were simply vermin.
