The Yellow House

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. Under UK law, trespass without force is a civil offence. I never break into a place, I never photograph a place that is currently occupied, as this would be morally wrong and intrusive, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose location or means of entry.  I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building.

I don't normally do residential locations as much as I used to, and that's because they all start to look the same after a while, and don't really offer anything different. Mansions aside, because they're sexy, I think the last time I wrote about an abandoned residential property was purely because it had coffins in the backyard.

This house certainly caught my attention! There aren't many bright yellow and green derelict properties rotting away in the countryside. But it was also familiar to me, because I'd spotted it on an auction site years ago, back when it was in better shape. In fact I'd tried to gain access through legitimate means back then, and been rejected. I was pleasantly surprised when a few years later every local urban explorer was posting about it online. It's become the place to be! And who can blame them? The quirky ones are always the most attractive.

Going by the photos and stories of those who had been here before me, the house has clearly been unloved for some time, clearly trashed and ransacked, and at least two urban explorers have reported seeing signs that a homeless person was living here, and have described finding leftover used needles. The neighbours had also allegedly noticed an influx in visitors. One day they heard banging and popped around to find someone trying to nab the cooker.
So I thought perhaps it was time I checked it out too, while it's still there. The future is bleak for this place. Alas, the quirky ones aren't just attractive to urban explorers, but to thieves and vandals as well.

Slipping inside I found that the yellow and green decor was prevalent throughout the house, but that it was pretty trashed.

There is some art that's been strewn across the floor, the remnants of a talented individual who once resided here.

It's very faint from having the sun shine on it through the window, but the calendars are dated January 2010, and give some indication of how long ago this house was last occupied. Although quite why there's two of them is a mystery.

Slipping into the lounge, one is faced with this awesome tile work, and a room with the odd addition of a second fireplace. 

In regards to the houses history, it appears on maps from the 1890s, and I've heard rumours that it was used by the military at one point, but I can't confirm that.

What I have confirmed is that a married couple lived here, and that the husband was a railway enthusiast. His mother worked in the ticket office of a railway station, and he went around the stations that had closed throughout the 1960s to collect various pieces of old railway paraphrenalia. They allegedly had an old railway platform bench in the front garden, and decorated the home with old signs and name plates. They also allegedly had an old railway signal that they gave to a neighbour.

This window looks through into the garage, and while it looks pretty cool, framed with the tiles on one side and a rather quirky door on the other, it's made bizarre by having a bunch of pictures of women stuck to the wall. I don't recognise half of them, but right above the central window is Cilla Black.

It's unusual, to say the least.

So presumably this was a lounge once, and I would love to have seen it back when it was correctly decorated and furnished. The occupants were spoken of quite fondly by those who knew them. Allegedly the husband was prone to having bonfires and firework parties, which some of the neighbours did take issue with, although it was all dealt with in a playful, friendly way. On one occasion the neighbour rang up his wife, who then tricked her husband by pretending that it was a phone call from the police. They were also known for playing loud country music and also presumably Cilla Black.

Personally when I was a child I always thought Cilla Black looked like an older version of April O'Neil from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon, but that's just me.

My understanding is that the wife became bedridden, and while the husband cared for her, he died first, and she moved to a care home. The house was sold, and has been passed around but not used ever since. Now, rumour has it that it's due to be demolished, which seems a shame. A lot of love and effort went into this place.

There are more tiles around the fireplaces.

Judging by the grid-like pattern above the fireplaces, there were once decorative tiles above them too, but they've been ripped off the walls and removed from the building.

It looks as though something was once up against this wall. The door next to it leads upstairs, but we'll come back to that.

There's also this pink room which also has a fireplace, though I'm pretty sure it backs on to one of the fireplaces in the lounge. See, the house used to be split into two dwellings and I'm pretty sure that this wall was likely where the split between the building was. The exterior only has one central chimney, but the fireplaces pointed in opposite directions into each dwelling.

I have no idea what the pink room would have been used for, but it does have an odd bedroom vibe to it. Perhaps if the wife was bedridden, maybe it was easier to care for her here than upstairs.

It leads out into what was presumably the kitchen.

The lords prayer is propped up in one of the interior windows, indicative that these were religious folks. And then nearby is this gem...

False teeth. Lovely.

Over here is a Cilla Black record.

There's some more tile decor in here too. Given that all the ones above the fireplace have been ripped out, I'm quite glad that I got here in time to see these ones.

There's a downstairs bathroom too, including a shower seat, definitely indicative of older occupants.

Okay, so back to this door in the lounge... it was time to see if the odd decor continued upstairs.

It's a four-bedroom house, which makes sense. Back when it was two dwellings, each would have had two rooms. Four bedrooms is a lot for an elderly couple though, so I do wonder what they did with it all.

The standard decor continues. The wallpaper is even set to frame things that would have once hung on the walls.

Presumably the bathroom was once a little more walled-up, and not just a toilet in a blank expanse facing the hallway.

It's still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

This bedroom was surprising because it's still carpeted and it also has two large wardrobes still here. But then I wouldn't want to be the person given the task of lugging these down such a narrow stairway, so it's understandable that they were left.

In this final room, the bed is propped up over the window, and I can't help wonder if maybe this was done by an urban explorer or thief, because the window looks right out over the neighbours garden, and anyone in here could be easily spotted.

In regards to stealth, the floorboards in this house creak louder than Maggie Thatcher opening her legs, and with some of the windows missing, I was treading very carefully. It wasn't the best time for my friend to phone me inviting me over for drinks, so of course that's exactly what happened.

But given the need to be stealthy, I was definitely apprehensive about looking in the outbuildings.

 We'll start with the garage.

It appears to be the dumping ground of much of the houses leftover furniture. There's a mattress in here, and also some oddly new-looking pornography...

I'm finding so much contrastingly new-looking porn in abandoned local places lately, I'm beginning to wonder if it's been planted here by some local weirdo. It's too much of a recurring theme, and it's always placed somewhere really obvious where it can't be missed. I think in the process of moving a double mattress out of a bedroom, down the stairs and into a garage, along with countless other pieces of old furniture, any normal person who found porn would have either binned it or hidden it. Nobody clears a house out and thinks "I'll just leave the porn on top of the pile for everyone to see."

As far as attempts at being edgy go, leaving porn lying around is a bit lame, especially in the internet age when the naked human form is no big deal. Even for porn, it's rather vanilla. If you want to shock people, and turn me on, at least bring something with amputees or something. I'll be honest, I think this might be the manifestation of a mid-life crisis rather than some teenage antics. I know everyones always quick to blame the kids, but I think sometimes you can tell how old someone is based on what they consider edgy. Look at the late 1960s and early 1970s when Alice Cooper was massively taboo because he went on stage wearing eye make-up and using a girls name. Times change, and that's why I think this is the work of some weird little old guy saying "Hehe... I left a picture of a... VAGINA!"
Cue crickets and tumbleweed, and a bunch of teenagers going "Who the fuck is this Tyrion-Lanister-looking manlet?"

And some might be thinking "Nah, it's kids. No adult would do this," but earlier this year videos leaked all over the internet of some middle aged guy with no hair and even less charisma smashing up a gorgeous abandoned hotel in Cheshire, so idiots do come in all ages, and I'll always mock them.

But I digress.

There's a nice little collection of shells here, bringing us out of the gutter and back to the quirkiness.

At the back of the garage was this toilet, slowly being reclaimed by nature. Even the outside toilet retains the yellow and green colour scheme. Imagine puting this much effort into a place, and having it for your entire life. They must have been happy.

The garden has this shed in it, repeating the colour scheme. The door has a letter box on it, so presumably it was once on the front of a house.

There's a lot of clutter in here. Presumably a lot of it was moved out of the main house and into here.

What is cool is the back wall of the shed. I'm amazed that so much of it has survived unvandalised, but it seems to be covered in biblical pictures.

Now I don't know enough about the bible to put story context to all of these images. I feel I know enough to make the informed opinion that God is the antagonist of the story, and that the humans are just doing their thing, enjoying life, but he just pops around occasionally and says "Worship me or I'll kill your kids," but there's no way I can look at all of these pictures and tell you what's going on.

But, every time you point out something in the bible that contradicts someones beliefs, like the time God sent snakes to bite the humans to stop them complaining that they were hungry, or that time Jesus and Judas made out, people always say "Oh but it's open to interpretation," so that's what I'm going to do.

The slanted picture shows the time Jesus taught his followers the YMCA. 
Below that, someone is being lectured by an angel, and their posture would suggest they aren't happy  about it. Maybe they're hungry and the angel has brought them snakes.

This has two men hugging, and while they seem quite emotional, everyone else is cheering, so my guess is someone has just come out of the closet, and everyone is happy for him. That sort of stuff happens in the bible all the time, right?

This is the Black Lives Matter protest that they held when they found out Jesus was going to be played by a white man in all subsequent re-tellings.

On the floor is a picture of someone waving their arms in the air while a huge flame comes out of a rock. I dunno, maybe he built a working model volcano for a science exhibit.

This is the garden of eden, before God decided that some creatures should be carnivorous. 

This is Joseph proposing to pregnant Mary so that she'd be married by the time she bore crotchfruit.

This is Jesus in the desert. I think this is when Satan makes his debut.

This is baby Moses being sent off down stream in a basket and abandoned by his mother.

This is Moses parting the red sea.

This is Jesus being caught skinny dipping. Someone has brought him a towel.

This looks like Noahs Ark before most of humanity got wiped out.

These would be the Egyptians with baby Moses after they adopted him.

This is a bunch of people holding pointy things and flaming torches. Basically they're angry because one of their neighbours needed to use the toilet, and so wasn't outside clapping at 8pm on a Thursday.

Now this is actually depicting the bible being written. The girl is saying "Dad, you know that part of the bible that says I have to marry someone if they rape me? Can we have that taken out please?"
And he's like "Julia, if you bother me one more time, I'll make women responsible for original sin. Now fuck off."

Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure it went down something like that.

The garden also had this cute seating area, and then right at the back of it was this large green and yellow shed.

But at that point I heard a sudden noise. The neighbours were in their garden, and sure to see me! I could either dash into the shed and hide for an undetermined amount of time until they went away, or I could get out of the garden and call it a day. Since I haven't seen any interior photos of that shed that particularly sell it as something I definitely shouldn't miss, I decided to retreat for now.

That's it for the yellow house. While it's clear that a lot of love and effort went into this a long time ago, the former occupants are long gone and the place has fallen into ruin. Its future is bleak. While urban explorers, cooker thieves and porn-carrying manlets continue to give it attention, so too do property developers, although they circle like vultures. But they are there, and someday this quirky, unique little place will be wiped off the face of the Earth, and all that will remain of it are the images online.
In the sport of appreciating abandoned buildings, one always finds themselves faced with the temporary nature of the world, but in cases like this it's particularly humbling.

That's all I've got. Next time I'm looking at an abandoned pub and then after that I'll be blogging about some kind of lorry graveyard. In the meantime, follow my Instagram, Like my Facebook and follow my Twitter.
Thanks for reading!