There are a couple of tiny houses right next to each other, both derelict, with "Danger Keep Out" scrawled on the doors in big friendly white letters. The doors themselves are wide open, but who needs locks when you've got white paint? The houses are engulfed in an ocean of brambles, but after a good half hour of getting stabbed by plants, I found myself at the door, ready to see what this place had to offer. There's probably an out-house buried in the garden somewhere too but I'm not fighting brambles just to make the same joke I make every time I see a toilet, sorry.
Often people in the urbex world will post houses with the ridiculous statement "I cant find any history on the place" and usually I don't really care because it's a house and all it really has going for it is that an ordinary person lived there until one day they didn't. Expecting to find a wikipedia article that you can copy and paste into an urbex post is just a tad absurd. But someone posted this one with the bold statement "No history whatsoever" and, well, I like a challenge.
Alas, I wasn't to have one. Seriously, how is it 2023 and people still don't know about Google?
The secret is shockingly simplistic. The house is on the grounds of an old estate. Old maps show a footpath leading from this house right to the mansion. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the inhabitants of this house were employed by the rich folks there.
While many humans have no doubt filled these walls with their body odour, flatulence and overall presence, I can shine the spotlight on one particular family, that being the Millingtons. Newly weds Edwin and Esther, both born in 1857, moved here in 1880. They also had with them a Sarah Stockton, who was listed on the census as a boarder. How romantic. Nothing says "Lets marry and start a family" quite like a third wheel entourage.
But once here, Edwin got employment as a gardener for the big cheeses of the nearby mansion.
At this point, this big cheese was a chap called Edward, who had lost his wife and also cousin Elizabeth in 1876. Because it wouldn't be a story about rich people without some good old fashioned incest, right?
Elizabeth had actually inherited the manor from her uncle, who had died without a child of his own.
Edwin sure didn't have the same issue. While he was described as quiet and unobtrusive, it seems all he ever did in his free time was shoot his DNA into Esther. And that's fine, obviously, but the size of this house in comparison with the size of the family really gives us an insight into the living conditions of a working class family in the Victorian Era.
Here in the lounge is some sort of contraption. Sat next to it, I think, is a very old fridge.
But seriously, what is this contraption? I've never seen anything like it before.
There's a central fireplace, and a cupboard, all of which is decorated in a beautiful Slimer-from-Ghostbusters Green. And of course, natures clawing its way in, as if it hasn't jabbed me enough today.
We have a small, empty pantry.
And of course, we have the stairs.
At the top of the stairs is one room. I didn't venture too far into the middle of it, trusting the floor to support my weight about as much as I'd trust Kate McCann to babysit. There seems to be a solitary bed here. But really, this is quite an odd layout by modern standards. Today a house will have a central hallway with the rooms leading off from it. This is just a room, with two smaller rooms attached.
There's a small fireplace in the corner.
So taking the size of the house into consideration, let's talk about Edwin and Edith's children.
The first child, Margaret, was born in 1881. She was followed by Lillian in 1882, Harry in 1884, Agnes in 1885, Martha in 1887, Cresswell in 1889, Samuel in 1891 and Robert in 1893.
That's a lot of crotchfruit crammed into a one tiny house.
The 1891 census lists Edwin and Esther as each being 35. Of their rabid rabble of semen demons, Margaret is nine, Lilly is eight, Harry is seven, Agnes is five, Martha is four, Cresswell is three and Samuel is just three months old. And it just baffles me! What about this living situation makes a couple say "Let's bring more human life into this wretched existence"? Where do they find the time??? Where do they find the privacy???
On the 1901 census, Margaret and Lillian have both moved out. Lillian has actually gone to become a servant at some other rich guys house. Harry is seventeen now, and a baker. Martha is fourteen and working as a domestic. And child labour aside, it's pretty cool that the family now has some additional income. Edwin and Edith have also had another daughter, Minnie, and they're looking after Margaret's daughter, Fanny.
And finally in the 1911 census, Edwin and Esther are each in their fifties, and now they're living a quieter life, with just fifteen year old Minnie, and Agnes's five-year-old daughter Alice.
These are the bedrooms leading off from the central upstairs room. It's weird to think that so many children lived in such a tiny house. But in the Victorian days it was actually commonplace among the poorer families.
But of the spawn of Edwin and Esther, Harry is perhaps the most notable. He went and married a lady called Jane Jones and together they set up their own bakery in Corwen. And thanks to the internet, I've got a photo from their wedding.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Can you feel the happiness emanating from this wedding photo? Personally I feel sorry for the girl in the middle, who moved during the exposure and has been immortalised as an Edwardian Sid from Ice Age.
Harry somehow has resting I've-been-kidnapped face in just about every photo I can find of him.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Harry and Jane must have really loved living in Corwen because in 1912 they named their firstborn daughter Corwena. I have her mugshot too.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
I do feel sorry for Corwena, being named after the town she was living in. That's school bully bait right there. Naturally she moved away as soon as she was able. Harry died in 1935, his obituary saying that he was seized by a sudden illness. Jane remarried in 1945, but she ended up with crippling arthritis. Her neighbours went to check on her in 1961, and found her dead. Her obituary described her as a beautiful character and a friend to everyone.
So moving on to the second house, the same "Danger Keep Out" message is painted on the door, but this time it has "2" written there too. Like it's a dangerous house sequel.
I have to stress, I don't know which of these tiny houses Edwin and Esther lived in, but it's of little consequence to the story really, because both houses are attached to each other and identical but mirrored around a central chimney. It's possible that the Millingtons had both houses, seeing as the census shows they once had a boarder.
Thankfully they did move to a larger house at some point in the early 20th Century, and Edwin passed away around 1918 from Influenza. His employers from the big manor actually attended his funeral, which is kinda nice. Esther was allowed to live in a cottage on the grounds with her daughter Minnie before she also passed away.
And then who inhabited these houses? I have no idea when they were last occupied. They have modern light switches but no bathroom. To me that suggests that their final years saw them used as something non-residential. Storage, perhaps. A hermitage, rather than a permanent home?
The commode in the pantry certainly suggests that someone elderly lived here last.
It's still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
And in the pantry there's a supermarket basket hanging from an old bicycle wheel, which is an oddly creative way to have additional storage space.
There's a surprising amount of stuff left behind, given that it's just a little ruin.
And here are the remains of a bed next to the fireplace, which certainly adds up. If they had a commode toilet then I highly doubt the last occupant was sleeping upstairs.
There are some plates next to the bed. When was the last time these were used? It all hints towards a rather rough lifestyle. The house is relatively remote, a good trek from civilisation, and yet someone elderly and not very mobile had clearly been living here seemingly in poverty and squalor.
There's a little bottle of pebbles. It's kinda cute. It's like a remnants of some old persons attempt at interior decorating with minimum money and resources.
I just love these delightfully dirty curtains still hanging in the window. This still retains a homely vibe, even in its decay.
As for the mansion that this house once served, it was converted into a farm house in 1928. The rich folks had at some point decided that they wanted a second manor on the same land, but that one was demolished in 1939. These houses, now abandoned, are surviving remnants of the once thriving estate. But even these are probably not going to last. They aren't listed. Nobody loves them. Even the attempt at keeping people out is half arsed. It's probably cheaper to demolish them than repair them, and with the powers-that-be eyeing up the land for potential wind turbines, that's probably what will eventually happen.
There's a big double bed upstairs, which I wasn't expecting. It's kinda cool. But I'm thinking that with a mattress on it, any restless sleeper would be in danger of rolling right over the railing and onto the stairs. As a sprawler who wakes up in all manner of odd positions, this layout gives me the willies.
There's a little seat in the corner. And there's a fireplace too.
This seems to be all I've got. Houses are considered the low hanging fruit of the urbex world, but I think that's less to do with the house itself and more to do with the rather cringey behaviour of the urbex scene, calling everything a murder mansion, using clickbait, leaving stickers all over dead peoples walls, calling things time capsules when the last occupant has only been dead for six months, and the fact that unoccupied houses are largely popular for the pinchables that can be yoinked for ebay. Houses have become synonymous with the lowest form of urbexer, and that is sad. But a place like this is quite nice. It's clearly ancient, clearly abandoned, and as far as history goes there's enough records available to paint us a picture not just of the lives of some ordinary people, but also the lives of a working class Victorian family, crammed into a tiny house with a horde of children.
It's quite fascinating, and also it drives home the benefits of the modern world. Sure, it's easy to complain, and I know things aren't perfect, but at least we have bathrooms and birth control.
My next blog will be my first Greek adventure on the travel blog, and after that I'll be posting another military thing in Shropshire to mix things up a bit, because I don't want to barf out all my Greece posts in one go. Let's drag that holiday out.
If you like my blogs then the best way to follow them is to follow my social media. It sucks, I know. It sucks for me too because the algorithms don't always show people who they're following and frankly I give up trying to figure out how it works. But you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Vero, Reddit, Threads and Twitter. Those are the apps I use, in order of how active I am on them. I often forget I even have Twitter. But give it a go anyway!
Thanks for reading!
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