As a real estate agent in Central Vermont, I go into a lot of very old basements/cellars. They are frequently damp and a little spidery but the laid up stone foundations, painstakingly and lovingly put in place 150 or more years ago, are still functioning the way they were designed. They let ground water in and they let ground water out. Buyers who are unaccustomed to old, historic New England homes don’t get why they can’t have a dry basement AND all the historic charm of an 1820 home. You can have it all but it might come at the cost of installing a new foundation which you might want but may not need. I guess I am just a non-apologetic lover of the old homesteads with cellars that work just fine.