Teddy Bear House

 

This random house was the "place to be" for urban explorers for a while, at least for the ones who like abandoned houses. This one does have something that sets it apart from the rest though. The garden contains a legion of teddy bears. 

And a few long term readers might wonder what I'm doing at a place that looks this modern and structurally sound. I know what I said about houses only a handful of blogs ago. Something along the lines of "I know houses are controversial in the urbex world, because for some reason so many urban explorers are hell bent on finding the least decayed one, and that leads them to finding pristine "time capsules" that take us back to the far flung era of 2021, and then the owners family walk in, fresh from the funeral, and say "Excuse me, Mr Urban Explorer, kindly put down my dead nans brassiere," and then the urban explorer goes on Youtube talking about the psycho Karen selfishly trying to ruin their adventure. It's a morally dubious practice, ruined by morally corrupt imbeciles with the combined IQ of an Ikea flatpack wardrobe, and that is why I prefer the absolutely wrecked places. Nobody can misconstrue a wreck."

But this one does have a rather compelling gimmick and it's literally right down the road from where I live, so shut up, Me.

 

This entire layout is rather creepy.

 

 Slipping inside was a piece of piss. The door was wide open, having had its lock broken by youtubers in desperate need of dopamine. Much to my delight, there's still stuff to see.

 

 

The tin of various marmalades is quite cute. 

 

 Apparently the phone needed washing.

 

 

There's a big rubber rat on the kitchen counter, and it did make me do a quick double-take. No doubt it's been placed there specifically for that purpose.

 "Susie" appears to be the name of the former owner. But I'm really not that interested in disclosing too much else, because it all seems a bit too modern.

 

Ordinarily with houses, I do like to dig up old census data and track the families back over multiple generations into the Victorian era and beyond. But with places like this, I'm not really interested. This is all too recent. The previous owner probably still has living relatives, and I'm a renegade historian, not a stalker. I'm here to document out of morbid curiosity more than anything.

 

 The lounge all feels a little too arranged too, with its not-quite symmetrical layout and books placed neatly on a central table.

 

 

The newspaper is dated 2004, giving an indication of when the home was last occupied. But this just adds to my suspicions. This place has clearly been broken into. The kitchen has been ransacked. Things have probably been nicked. This room is a little too tidy to have been abandoned and exposed to looters since 2004.

 

Towards the other side of the lounge, my suspicions were confirmed. It's an absolute mess, but the TV stand is positioned in a way that means nobody on the sofa or armchairs would be able to comfortably watch the TV. They were put around that central table for the sake of a photo. 

And it's annoying because the thing is, unlike other urbex sites, like factories, cinemas, chapels and whatnot, houses are a lot more personal. A factory or cinema may become derelict due to financial reasons. A house usually becomes abandoned because someone died. This was someones home once. It's an entire memorial to someones life. I know the state of abandonment gives it a certain eerie sense of fascination, but there's no excuse for rearranging these places. A good urbexer won't change anything.

This newspaper has a headline that really hasn't aged well!

It's time to head upstairs!

This room is quite nice. Its circular window makes it pretty quirky, and the pink walls would indicate that the owners granddaughter may have stayed here sometimes.

There's a calendar from 2011 here. 

And now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the bathroom.

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

The bedrooms have a bit of character. There's another huge teddy here.

There are some documents here, which I understand belong to the homeowners daughter, appropriately censored.

The owner was seemingly a fan of Take That, but that's not surprising. They do seem to have that "mature woman" demographic.

They also supported Wolverhampton football club.

The master bedroom has clearly been rearranged by urbexers. Nobody is going to perch a mirror like that, with numerous books propped up by the wall as if on display. This was staged for shots. There really isn't any such thing as a "time capsule" in urbex. This is just a time capsule of the day the last urban explorer was here.

There's a teeny crucifix next to this book.

Tiny Jesus!

And with the house covered, it's time to head back outside and see the rest of the garden, in all its teddy glory.

 

So while doing some rudimentary research on the place, I did learn something rather disappointing. One such urbexer has apparently staged the whole thing, arranging the teddies in the garden to make the place look creepy. 

 

And like that, the illusion is shattered. 

Rearranging a dead persons house is not the flex you think it is. It certainly isn't urbex. If this was your own grandparents, you'd be miffed.

 

 

The thing is, people do judge someone based on their home layout. I came here wondering what kind of eccentric person lived here, and other people who aren't as open minded may have judged the previous owner as maybe being a bit weird and creepy. And I know it's just words, but maybe the last occupants family won't like their deceased relative being portrayed in that way. Am I making sense? 

So the identity of this house has all been staged, perhaps to the owners detriment, all so that we might all click on some bozos video and add some ad revenue icing on their JSA cake. It's wrong. It's not what urbex is about.

 

 

Teddies aside, what we can discern from the garden is that the owners liked gardening and grew their own food. They also had grandchildren, as evidenced by the super soakers.

 

 

There's this long plush dog draped over the vegetable patch. Aren't these long plushies actually for practical purposes? They're draught blockers. They go on the ground in front of the door to stop cold air getting in through the crack at the bottom

Apparently it suits some youtubers interests better if it's out here in the garden.

 

 

This little owl is cute. 

 

And that's really all I've got for this place. What began as intrigue and wonder was quickly drowned by disappointment as I learned the truth about this place, and now my opinions on other urban explorers have returned to their status quo, which is cynicism and lethargy. 

If you are planning on getting into urbex, then my best advice is that your integrity is more valuable than your follower count. A good urban explorer understands that.

Next, I'm blogging about a house I visited years ago and completely forgot about. It's an absolute wreck and I want to share it. I think I need to document something that actually feels abandoned. I always feel a bit dirty after going to places that are trending with the urbex herd. I need to cleanse myself with something awesome.

In the meantime, the best way to stay up to date with my blog is to follow me on social media. I'm on Facebook and Instagram, reluctantly so since both are algorithmic hellscapes. I'm also still on Twitter, which is full of people bitching about women. I'm also on Threads, which is full of people bitching about men. And I'm on Blue Sky and Vero, which seem to be giving a platform to ordinary people who just want to post cool stuff without drama and bickering. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of coming online and being baited into bickering. Just let me post my blog and my photos!

Thanks for reading!

Hafren river cruise boat

What's up, folks? As any long-term reader will know, I absolutely love quirky stuff, and I like shipwrecks too. You may remember I swam out to a capsised cruise ship off the coast of Greece. And much to my delight, Shropshire has something of an equivalent! Obviously it's not as big, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in cuteness (to quote my old dating profile). This is the Hafren, and it was to Ironbridge what the Sabrina boat is to Shrewsbury. And that's quite fitting really, because in Welsh folklore, Hafren and Sabrina were the same person.

And that brings us down the long-winded legend route, so to break up the wall of text, here's a photo of Hafren back when it was still operational. 

(Photo credit: Bill Cox)

According to folklore, Hafren was the illegitimate daughter of Locrin and his secret lover, Estrildis, who he found on a Germanic ship after a botched invasion. But Locrin was forced into a diplomatic marriage with Gwendolen, the princess of Cornwall. But when Gwendolen's father died, Locrin suddenly had no reason to suck up to some foreign monarch anymore and promptly divorced Gwendolen and married Estrildis. Gwendolen was miffed, and did the popular thing in circa 1100BC, which was raise an army and kill the lot of them. Hafren and her mother were drowned in the River Severn near Dolforwyn Castle, Dolforwyn literally translating to Maidens Meadow.

 

(Photo not mine. Credit unknown)

 

Gwendolen named the river after Hafren. "Severn" seems to be a distorted version of the name. Remember, "F" makes a "V" sound in Welsh, and the whole thing was further murkied up by the Romans, who renamed Hafren "Sabrina." They also seem to have added a plot twist that Locrin, or Locrinus, is the grandson of the Goddess Venus, giving the family tree that divinity that presumably causes Hafren/Sabrina to be referred to as a river goddess. 

Some legends say that Hafren still haunts the river, and can be seen on foggy nights. And technically, if we consider the boat, a Hafren does still haunt the Severn, tragically following its namesakes footsteps.

 

Anyway, it goes without saying that I boarded the Hafren. How could I not? It just wouldn't be an adventure if I didn't perch precariously on something unstable and wave at canoeists while wearing a pirate hat.

 

The Hafren sure is dirty, but once I was actually on it, I noticed a few details shining through the filth. It has the faint vestiges of its former paint job and there's still a telephone number here.

Across the river, there's a deer! It came down for a drink but took off when it realised it had my attention. I'm afraid there's no way to scramble across a diagonally slanted shipwreck in a subtle or graceful way.

From what I have read from old articles, the Hafren first set sail on the Severn in Easter 2010, and was the first river cruise boat in Ironbridge in half a decade, it's predecessor being sunk by vandals. What Hafren was doing prior to river cruises in Ironbridge, I don't know, but I think it was actually purchased from America.

 

It did regular cruises along the river for £3 per person, lasting 45 minutes, seven days a week, although subject to cancellations if weather conditions were shite. The Shropshire Star did report in 2012 that the cruises might be forced to stop due to the water level dropping. Certainly an alien concept in the 2020s where the British seasons go Winter, Spring, Winter, Spring, Winter, Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn, Winter, all in the space of a week. 

But the Hafren was popular. It had very positive reviews, mentioning very knowledgeable staff and a great vantage point for spotting wildlife. 

It also had a sister boat, called Bumblebee, whose chain snapped in 2013, sending it free-floating all the way to Bridgnorth. I guess we should refer to it in the past tense as Bumblebeen.

 

It's still possible to peek through the windows and take a look at the Hafren's interior.

 

 

This appears to be a desk or something. There's a chunk of wet mud there too, indicative that the water level has dropped a bit. 

 

 

And here we have the fold-down seats. 

 

I'm not sure when the boat sank, but I think it was around 2017-ish. The owners were clearly quite passionate about what they did, having had numerous boats on the Severn over the years, and while the Hafren did get a bit damaged, they apparently did have the means to repair it. But from what I can tell, they live elsewhere and relied on someone else to keep them updated, and this person neglected to inform them that their beloved boat had started sinking. By the time they found out, it was too late to do anything. Hafren could have been saved if the communication had been there.

 

But as I looked down through the windows at the rows of seats, I realised that it simply wasn't enough to sit on the Hafren and peer in. I decided that these seats would look so much better from the opposite angle. So I slipped inside.

Now, to clarify, these antics are the product of my own crazy quest for dopamine, and I don't condone this at all. The boat was stirring under me. It's embedded in silt, and not exactly stable. The diagonal angle of the boat didn't make it tricky to walk through because the interior was also full of silt. But if something was to go wrong, I wouldn't be able to get out of here quickly if every footstep sinks me halfway up my shins. 

So yeah... don't do this. I'm a terrible role model.

Here we are at the desk we saw earlier.

And here are all the fold-down seats. Only a few years ago, people would be sat on these, checking out the wildlife mooching about around the river. It would have been quite pleasant.

But alas, the Hafren will likely never sail again. It has truly followed in the path of its namesake, the young girl Hafren of Welsh folklore who met her end in the river. And with recent rainfall I'd be very surprised if it hasn't deteriorated further. But that's part of what made this adventure special. There will come a time when it will be impossible to wade through the Hafren and sit on its roof, and appreciate the service that the owners once provided with it.

 

And that's all I've got for today. Wasn't this cool? As far as abandoned things go, it's definitely different, and it gave me a bit of a challenge, which I love. I don't think there are many who would actually go into it. The average human, after all, has a survival instinct. But I like shipwrecks for some reason, so it won me over. As far as trips to Ironbridge go, I'm satisfied. 

I'm satisfyonbridge.

 

My next blog will be more boats! Less awful puns! Exciting times!

 

And to make sure you don't miss any blog updates, follow my social media! I'm active on the algorithmic shit shows that are Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, as well as Twitter for some reason. And I also dabble in any attempt to come up with superior alternatives, and this has led me to Vero and Bluesky, which I use with shocking regularity. 

 

Thanks for reading!