The starting house[1] was a structure that acted as the starting place when first spawned in a Java Edition Indev world. It could be considered the first "structure" added to the game (though it could also be considered a feature).
The structure consisted of a single 7 block wide × 7 block long × 4 block tall room, with a 1×2 hole for players to exit and two torches on the interior. When starting houses were added, they were made of mossy cobblestone (which was unavailable naturally on the map anywhere else) and 4 chests, one filled with TNT, one with a full stack (99 at the time) of every type of block, another with every type of item and one filled with every color of wool. As Indev progressed from testing items and blocks to testing the actual survival aspect, these chests were removed. Later, the design of the house was changed. The floor was changed to stone and the walls and roof were changed to planks.
Chest contents
The amount and content of the chests changed between versions.