The house by the training stables

So I'm finally blogging about this one! It's only been on my radar since 2015, when I did some of my earliest blogs on the likes of Tilstock Airfield, the Cherry Tree Hotel and that lovely, dearly missed derelict house full of Christmas decorations. But this one slipped through my fingers. Every time I checked it out, it was either sealed up tight or, on one occasion, full of humans. But now the house gets shared around urban explorers like a pack of tictacs at a halitosis support group, so I'm here again. 

 

It's weirdly nostalgic to be back in this part of Shropshire. So many of my earliest blogs took place around here, and a lot has changed. That aforementioned lovely Christmas House was demolished after some silly person faked finding human remains there, and even called the police, all for views on their Youtube video. The things to see in Tilstock have also been dramatically reduced. News of this places pending demolition gave me a sense of urgency to get here while I could. Against all odds, it looks like the Cherry Tree Hotel, a pub that looks like a well placed fart could bring it crashing down, will outlive all the other urbex spots in the area. Who would have guessed?

 

This was presumably the dining room. It's very narrow, but it's in relative proximity to the kitchen. 

 

So the house shows up on old maps in the Victorian era, and is referred to as training stables. And indeed there is a plethora of stables next to it, and a huge grassy expanse to the south that was once a race course. 

Horse races in this area were often two-to-three day events, organised and funded by the local gentry, and have been described as a great time of festivity for the locals. While one publication states that races started in 1762, I've found evidence that they started much earlier. One publication lists the first race as being on Monday 22nd May 1600. 

A letter by a Dorothy Hamner to her brother in 1727 talks about attending a race here. She claims that seven horses ran for a £50 prize, and she namedrops a few rich folk like Sir Thomas Grosvenor and Captain Lightfoot. Other documents mention the race, and say that coming in first place was a horse called Collier, owned by Lord Molyneux. In second place was the unimaginatively named Witty Gelding owned by Mr Fletcher, and in third place was Merry Andrew owned by Captain Cotton.

 

Merry Andrew is a great horse name. I feel like it's interchangeable with Captain Cotton. Like either one of those could be the horse. But then I often find race horse names entertaining. In the late 1700s there was a race horse called Potoooooooo, which was pronounced Potatoes because Pot-eight-o's, and I absolutely love it! I don't think Potoooooooo ever raced here, but he was owned by Richard Grosvenor, the nephew of the Thomas Grosvenor who raced here in 1727, so it's entirely possible that a family who enjoy racing would attend events at the same places. Just to break up the wall of text, here's a picture of Thomas Grosvenor, who probably stood here before the house did.

 

(Thomas Grosvenor. Picture credit: Wikipedia.)

 

The races on the 2nd and 3rd June 1762 were won by a grey colt called Pyrois, owned by a Colonel Thornton, who I thought at first might be Thomas Thornton, a flamboyant huntsman, falconer, and husband of Alicia Thornton, the first female jockey. Thomas also owned a dog called Pitch who is alleged to be the ancestor of all Jack Russel terriers. There's actually a painting of him that depicts Pitch, which I think is pretty cool.

 

(Image not mine, obviously.)

 

 But Thomas Thornton would have been ten in 1762, so I'm inclined to believe this Colonel Thornton refers to his father William, a "celebrated though eccentric sportsman"who did achieve the rank of Colonel during his military career. He's best known for raising a militia to oppose the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, which attempted to forcibly replace the ruling monarch.

But in regards to Thorntons horse, Pyrois, it's actually a pretty cool name. In Greek mythology, Pyrois is one of the four undead horses who pull the chariot of the sun God Helios across the sky.

 

So some pretty big names were coming here to race. It seemed to attract all the rich toffs of the era. It also pops up in some unexpected historic media. A copy of Sporting Magazine from 1810 claims that a man named William Henshaw, nearly at the age of sixty, was bet that he couldn't walk ten times around the race track in one hundred minutes. The course was a mile long, so he had a ten mile walk ahead of him, and he completed his challenge in just under 90 minutes. 

The last horse race is said to have taken place on the 5th July 1845. I have no idea why they stopped.

 

It looks like the pantry has been turned into someones office. 

 

And here's the kitchen.

So I have no idea who the first occupants of this house were, but no doubt they had something to do with the training stables and race course in the Victorian era. What I do know is that in the early 20th Century, the house was lived in by a man named Robert Ashley and his wife May. These guys are pretty integral to the development of the local area, and incredibly successful people. Robert ended up becoming the grand master of his local Freemason lodge and everything. By the time they married in 1932, Robert was already the proprietor of the local garage. He'd actually establish a number of them, and a car show room and dealership. But quite significantly, for me anyway, he and his wife built an outdoor swimming pool in 1936, and then in 1938 they had the Cherry Tree Hotel built in front of it, opening in 1939. 

How bonkers is that? It was one of the first places I ever blogged about, and the owners house was sitting here similarly vacant this entire time! At the time of its opening, the Cherry Tree Hotel was named the Witch Ball, and I've seen a few people draw connections between the unusual name and Roberts Freemasonry, and say "Oooooh Occult stuff." 

No. 

A Witch Ball is something that people would hang in their windows to warn off evil spirits. The Witch Ball pub was popular with soldiers who were stationed at the local airfield. In this case, the name Witch Ball is clearly symbolic of giving the soldiers a nice little break from the doom and gloom of war, leaving all that unpleasantness outside for the time being and having a good time. That's all it is. Not everything is a conspiracy. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

Here's Robert Ashley, sat with the local football team, whose field he owned and gifted to them. By all accounts, he was a very nice guy and well-respected by the community.

His wife May died in this house on the 6th December 1964, but another publication mentions a man named Henry Hill living here in 1962, inventing some sort of apparatus for borehole drilling. Was he an associate of May and Robert? A lodger perhaps? Robert and May did have one son, Nicolas, who would have grown up and moved out by then, so maybe they rented his room out. That seems like a logical explanation.

Here's something a bit odd. The corridor has a pull cord for the lights. This sort of thing is typically found in bathrooms, not hallways.

And here we have perhaps the best feature of this house, the fireplace in what I assume was once a swanky lounge. I've seen a few urban explorers nickname this place the "Fireplace House," which I did roll my eyes at initially, because that's like me saying I'm a human with limbs. But now that I'm here in person I can totally see why people might consider the fireplace the most defining feature of the house.

It's pretty huge, and gorgeous. Some have even said it's got some masonic imagery in it. But I'm not the right three aliens in a human suit person for that conversation.

 

The old light switches have been ripped from the wall and dropped on the floor. 

 

 

Here's a bedroom. It's very spacious but intriguingly it has a mirror in the corner, where an old wash basin would have been. So the occupants could have a rudimentary fix-up in their bedroom. 

 

Despite living here, I'm not sure if Robert and May had anything to do with horse racing. But then, at that point horse racing wasn't exactly practical. During the first world war, the race course was used by the military to accommodate about 25,000 men and train them in trench warfare. There was also a military hospital with 600 beds. 

All of these structures were removed after the war, but then in 1940 the entire area was turned into an internment camp for refugees from Germany and Austria, and a few other places in Europe occupied by the Nazis. The camp had just over a thousand people living in squalor, in a field of tents surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Inmates were categorised based on their perceived threat, which ultimately determined their level of freedom. The diet was salted herring, the sanitation was very minimal, suicide attempts weren't unheard of, and in autumn it's said that the camp closed down due to public outrage about the living conditions. And let's face it, they must have been pretty abysmal to get the British public sympathetic towards refugees. Did the Daily Mail not exist yet? 

 

Once all the inmates were shipped off to the Isle of Man, the land was used as Prisoner of War camp, which then closed in 1942 when the airfield was built, extending right across the field.

 

So life in this house was probably interesting for Robert and May Ashley, their son Nicolas, and their inventor friend Henry, but likely had very minimal horse racing. 

 

However it is said that training gallops were set up on the old race course during the 1960s. They even had smaller fences put up for youngsters and their ponies. It's quite nice really. The war was behind them and people were moving forward.

 

Here's another bedroom. This one still has the sink in the corner. 

 

And here's another bedroom with another sink.

Robert Ashley passed away in 1977 but I don't think he was living here when it happened. In the 1970s, the house came under the occupancy of a man called Mick. 

Mick was born in 1934, and he was passionate about horses. He had a jockey license from 1953 to 1973, and rode a total of forty winners. In 1960, he met a bookie called Thomas Stuck, who wanted to train race horses. Unfortunately bookies were forbidden to own horses or hold a trainers license, but he got around it by buying some stables, and eighteen horses, under his wifes name. He hired Mick to be his private trainer. In 1963, Mick moved to Formby where he stayed until 1968, and rode in the grand national. He's even depicted on the poster advertising the event, with the red diamond on his back.

(image nor mine, obviously)

 

Mick moved here shortly after, and continued his training operation, making use of the stables and the race course. Also with him were his daughters. Now these two women are still alive so I didn't research too deeply. I'm a renegade historian, not a stalker. What I do know is that at least one daughter was part of his training operation, and had her first horse race at the age of fourteen. When she got married she had two ponies serve as her ring bearers, which is just awesome. 

Mick allegedly moved out of this house in 1992, and as such the horse training that took place here is very much still in living memory among the locals. Naturally there are photos too. Here's a photo of a horse named Seratina, which was taken in the stables out back.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

Seratina was apparently not fast enough for racing, but she is apparently the grand daughter of Hyperion, who is apparently one of the most famous race horses in history, even having his own statue outside a jockey club in Newmarket and even having his skeleton on display too! 

Apparently he's fathered a number of winners, so he's overall considered to have good genes and has had a very prolific love life. It's rather unfair. He fathers a bunch of kids with different women and ends up with a statue. If I do it, I get syphilis and end up on whatever TV show has filled the Jeremy-Kyle-shaped void in our lives nowadays.

What actually did replace Jeremy Kyle? Did he kill off that entire genre?

This was the main bathroom. But as we can see, the pipe thieves have been in and ripped everything out of the floor.

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

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

 

Well here's where they dumped the bath, right here in the hallway at the back of the house. The hallway is a bit odd because despite being between numerous rooms, it's still got a fireplace.

 

 

That door next to the window leads to a semi-circular conservatory. Unfortunately the door is locked. I was able to see into it, and it was big and empty. Even so, as a completionist I am a bit miffed. 

 

 

Having said that, I totally missed the cellar in this place, and that has annoyed me somewhat. I've seen photos online. The cellar door is a trap door in the hallway that somehow completely escaped my attention. It had a safe, a load of old bottles, some old light fixtures, and some graffiti from 2012. Not much, but I'm still sad that I missed it. 

 

A few other names are associated with the house and the training grounds, and they might be familiar to people with an interest in horse racing.

The jockey Tommy Shone was born in 1921 and rode more than 235 winners during his racing career, which was interrupted abruptly by those dastardly Nazis. He returned to racing after the war but retired from racing in 1960, at which point he came here to train horses before making his return to racing in 1963.

A jockey named James Shaw rode two winners that were each trained here by a chap called Colin Laidler. These horses were called Fair Tread and Gay Sari.

... It was a different time. 

Colin also taught a chap called Peter Wegman who shared a room here with Jimmy the stable jockey. So it would seem that a number of people employed here actually had accommodation here too. I'm not sure if that was in the house itself or in the stables. There's certainly enough rooms in the house.

 

This, I assume, is the master bedroom. That would give this house four bedrooms in total. I can totally see the big cheeses taking this one, and leaving the three smaller ones for their children, lodgers, and employees. This house would have been full of life at one point.

 

In 2006 the local Butterfly Conservation purchased the land that once housed the race course. Apparently this is the only place in the midlands where the silver-studded blue butterfly can be found, and so they want to safeguard the habitat. The old Tilstock control tower is on the land too, but they've sealed it up and painted it in cheesy army colours, which is a bit of a shame. I would love to get in.

I've heard it said that the guy who played Percy Sugden on Coronation Street owned this house in recent years, but I haven't been able to verify that. I did, however, find loads of letters in this house dated around 2013 documenting the last owners steady spiral into debt. I wonder how he's getting on. 

The house was sold in an auction in 2022 with plans to demolish it and build a bunch of dull, characterless monstrosity houses on the site, and it was really that news that fueled my sense of urgency to come here. I wanted to see this house before it was gone forever. 

 

 

There's one room left, and it's this tiny room which I assume was used as a study or an office. It has a fireplace, and a filing cabinet in the corner, which is full of documents detailing the last owners previous debt. 

 

 

There's a bunch of score cards here from the previous owners little hunting posse. I can't say I'm a huge fan of killing animals for sport. They're better than humans. Less smelly, and less drama.

 

That's all I've got. At the time of writing, the house still stands. Although I hear horror stories of theft and vandalism from some of the trashier urbexers, so I'm not in any rush to make a return visit. It will just piss me off. The best we'll ever see a place is on our very first visit. 

This place is cute. It's not the most exciting place in the world, but it's one to tick off the list, and it's a long time coming. I've scratched a decade-old itch here. 

My next few blogs will be houses too, before I dart off on my next overseas adventures on the travel blog.

That's all I've got.

If you like this blog, then the best way to keep up is to follow my social media. Except that's not a good way at all, because the algorithms don't always show us the people we follow anymore. So recently I've been dabbling in a social media app called Blue Sky. Another one! There's not enough space on my phone! I've had to delete my AI girlfriend and everything!

But in all seriousness, I remember social media how it used to be, when it was fun and not algorithmic bullshit prioritising the people who have paid to be seen by people. So I'm always looking for alternatives to the big ones. Vero has been great for offering that Instagram vibe, but there's nobody on it and it's buggy as fuck. Threads was made as an alternative to Twitter, but it was really just Zuckerbergs dick-measuring contest with Musk, and we all knew it would be bad. It has Zuckerberg in it. Anything with that walking dribble of piss in it is always going to be horrible! And really we all know that choosing between Zuck and Musk is just picking your preferred kind of cancer. What kind of cancer do you want? I personally would like no cancer. That's why I'm giving Blue Sky a go, because it seems at the very least to be trying to give us what social media should and used to be. (I am not sponsored by Blue Sky.)

 

 But click this link to follow me there. And if you want, you can still follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twatter, Threads, Vero and Reddit. Whether you see my posts is another question altogether. 

Thanks for reading!

Ruined farmhouse

Houses are sort of like the low hanging fruit of the urbex world, in that they require little effort but they are ridiculously numerous and easy to spin into a good clickbaity myth. I may have neglected the local house scene lately in favour of my overseas adventures, which means I have a lot of being a bad example to catch up on here in my local (ish) area. 

A little while ago I swung by this ruined farm house, which is allegedly one of the oldest in its immediate area, counting a few hamlets, villages and whatnot. It hasn't been lived in for quite some time, as is evidenced by the fact that there's not much left inside and it's falling to pieces. It's little more than a shell now, but that's fine. It doesn't need yoinkables to appeal to me. It just needs a good story, and just enough danger to make it interesting but not enough to actually kill me. This place has that.

 

The downside is that the main backbone of my research is census data. Its great for finding out who lived where and when, and what they did for a living, but it lacks any actual humanity. I think humans are more than their jobs. The most interesting people have passions and hobbies, and things to bring to an actual conversation. Unfortunately I can't really discern that from census data, but it's still possible to breathe some life into this shell. 

The house is currently owned by the water company, Severn Trent, who allegedly raised the rent to drive out the last family living here, and have since refused to sell it. Allegedly they have a plan for it. Is it for the house to eventually crumble into nothing? Great plan, Severn Trent!

From a little bit further back, we can see that it was actually divided into two houses with two very different styles. Each half is designed to be a separate house, complete with its own upstairs area, but they're still connected internally, which is a bit peculiar. I assume they were built as one, and the door between them was blocked off at some point. 

The 2009 Streetview shows it empty, but not yet deteriorated to its present condition.

(Image credit: Google Streetview)

But thanks to the internet, we can rewind much further than that, back to 1884.

(Image not mine, obviously)

 

I guess all those cows have since been eaten. 

There's smoke coming from the chimney, and I absolutely love that I can look at this picture from 1884 and accurately guess who is in there at the precise moment it was snapped.

 

The first occupants were the Gill family, headed by a widow, Frances. I'm not entirely sure when her husband died, or whether he lived here with her at all. He married Frances in 1808. 

By 1851, Frances was living here with her unmarried adult children, Thomas and Sarah in their late thirties, and their entourage of servants. The census data is difficult to read, because it's all written in cursive and makes my eyes bleed. No wonder boomers on Facebook can barely spell anything! When they were in school, English was just a trail left by a spider with diarrhea! 

The most legible parts of the 1851 census are the servants and their duties, and the fact that three of them are housekeepers really paints a picture that the Gills were pretty wealthy. They have a young farm labourer named William, and a fifteen year old girl called Jane Jones being one of the housekeepers. Rounding up the housekeeper staff are Gwen and Anne in their thirties. So seven people lived here in total. I do wonder if the house having two distinct upstairs areas has something to do with the servants quarters. That would make sense.

The 1861 census shows that Thomas and Sarah still live here, in their late forties. It mentions that their farm is about two hundred acres and has five employees, but Gwen is the only name that's remained since the 1851 census. The others are all new servants. The most curious one is a Rowland Edwards, a farm labourer who is 72. It seems a bit unusual to hire a man of that age to be a farm labourer, but hey-ho. Maybe he was super healthy.

By all accounts, Sarah and Thomas Gill were pretty good people. When their local church was renovated in 1864, Thomas donated a flagon to hold water and plate to hold bread. Sarah donated an altar linen. 

Still, it's curious that the Gills never married and went their own way. They were sibling housemates their entire lives, and seemingly had no children. 

By 1871 they had moved away to Llanfechain in Wales. There Thomas Gill is listed as a landowner and "Justice of the Peace," which is some kind of magistrate. He's not Welsh Batman. Although that would make Gwen his Alfred.

 

 

There's quite a few barns outside the house but none of then are accessible. But it hardly matters. We all know what barns look like. 

 

 

This barn can be seen in the background of an old photo. 

 

(Image not mine, obviously)

 

I have no idea who these people are, but that hat hasn't done any favours for the person crouching behind the child, who just looks rather sinister in what was probably intended to be a wholesome family photo. Oh dear.

 

Time to slip inside the house...

It's a rather splendid mixture of decay and wholesomeness, isn't it? There's very little vandalism here, and through the decay its still possible to envision this as a family home. 

 

After the Gill family had moved out, the Jones family moved in. It was interestingly the same family structure, with a family of adults headed by a lone female matriarch, Jane Jones. Unfortunately it's not the same Jane Jones who had once been the young teenage housekeeper here. That would be a neat twist. But no, they are different people. 

 

Jane Jones lived here as of 1871, without her husband even though he wouldn't die until 1899. But keeping her company were her two sons, Simon and Edmund, who were 28 and 31. As with the Gills, they have a small collection of servants living with them, waggoners, housekeepers, labourers, and whatnot. The Jones family actually had a male housekeeper, Edward, who was fourteen. It does seem to eschew traditional gender roles of the time and I wonder if his age had anything to do with that. 

I'm not entirely sure why Jane was living separately from her husband. This is, unfortunately, the sort of depth and nuance that cannot be found by looking at census data. Whatever the story, Jane had another child, Mary, who still lived with her father, and by 1881, Jane had moved back to be with them, leaving Simon and Edmund to run this farm by themselves.

 

The 1871 census does say that this farm consists of 200 acres while the 1881 census gives lists just 150, which is indicative that Simon and Edmund had to sell some land to make ends meet. Did they meet a financial hiccup perhaps?

There is a Mary living with them in 1881, but she's not their sister. Rather she is Simon's wife, although the 1881 census gets this wrong and lists her as Edmund' s wife instead. Whoops.

They have a handful of staff, including shepherds and farm labourers.

By 1891, Edmund had moved out and married a woman named Margaret, leaving the house to Simon and his wife Mary. They did as married couples do, and shot their DNA into each other and added young Thomas to the household. Thomas would continue to live here, taking up the farming trade. Simon seemingly moved out when Thomas got married in 1918. Alas, Thomas passed away in this house in 1922, and Simon himself would follow in 1923 at the ripe old age of eighty. Thomas was awfully young, only 38. I've not found any records of him having children.

 

The front room has this wonderful huge fireplace flanked by the remnants of pretty wallpaper. It's probably the feature that adds the most character to the entire house. When I look at this room, I can totally envision the Gill family, the Jones family, or any of the houses successive residents chilling out in here, smoking a pipe, reading a newspaper, setting up their very first TV, and just relaxing. It feels homely here, despite the decay. 

 

The fireplace is huge though. Think how many home invaders you could cook in that. 

 

 

I'm not entirely sure when the house was split into two. Presumably it was in the early 20th Century, because that's when we start to see some overlap with the inhabitants. Firstly, a chap called John moved here from Warwickshire with his wife Ester and their horde of children, Edward, Ruby, Ida, Harry and Trevor. His obituary mentions that they moved here in 1909, so the Jones family would have been their neighbours.

John was quick to find employment at the local hotel where he remained until his retirement in 1947. He lived to the mighty age of 92, and there are plenty of photos of him online.

 

(Photo of John not mine, obviously)

And now that we're moving beyond the clinical and emotionless world of census data, talking about people within living memory, it's possible to tell a little bit more about John. He was apparently a lovely gentleman and very fond of horses. In fact he soon became the head coachman at the hotel where he worked. His wife, Ester, was also described as a lovely lady, and I've found photos of her too!

 

(Photo of Ester not mine, obviously)

 

And these photos are allegedly taken outside this very house, which is cool. And even though they already had a ginormous horde of children when they moved in, John and Ester clearly thought this was a brilliant location to raise more, because they had an additional five, Gwen, Samuel, Joan, Mary and Vyrnwy. They must have been knackered.

Mary and Vyrnwy were twins, but rather unfortunately little Vyrnwy died of pneumonia when he was just two months old in 1912. There is a photo of Ester holding a baby in 1912, and since it's dated October, after little Vyrnwys passing, it can be assumed that this is Mary.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

 By 1939, John and Ester were living here with Harry, Trevor, Samuel, and Joan. Their children are all adults at this point, with Harrys occupation listed as a shepherd, Trevor as a forestry labourer, Samuel as a farm labourer, and Joan joining her mother with household duties.

 

I'm not sure what became of the other children. Gwen is a bit of a black hole of information, and her entire existence is actually word of mouth, but Ida had married a mechanic called Norman in 1930, so moved out to start a family of her own at a place called Eagles Nest. I think they ended up owning a local shop. Edward similarly got married in 1933, and Mary did have children although I haven't got dates of birth for them. In fact, as soon as I realised they were still alive I stopped my digging. I'm a renegade historian, not a stalker. 

I'm not entirely sure what Ruby was doing during this time, but I did hear that she later moved "next door," which is essentially the same house.

 

 

I guess this was the pantry.

At some point there must have been a fire. It's taken a good chunk out of the roof, and the elements have subsequently got in, making everything a rather delicious death trap. Let's do the last thing anyone should do in a fire-damaged building, and go upstairs.

 

The old landing rail is lying on the floor next to the stairs.

 

 

The upstairs is as you'd expect. It's burnt out, empty, and I'd trust the floorboards to support my weight about as much as I'd trust the McCanns to babysit.  

There is a video on the internet from about four years ago that shows these upper rooms, still derelict, but also less fire-fucked, with lovely wallpaper to give it all character, and plants reaching in through the ceiling to give it that jumanji vibe along with a looming sense of temporarity. It's a bit hard to watch because it just plays cheesy sad music throughout, but it makes for a refreshing change of pace in the urbex world in that we actually see the building in question, and not just half an hour of some guy talking about how they just got chased by an alligator or something. Someone on Youtube actually gets that urbex is about the building, and not about getting your weird head on camera, and I appreciate that.

So according to that video, there were at least four bedrooms up here at one point. It's not really very obvious now.

 

This is the only bedroom that's survived, in stark contrast to the others. There's still ash in the fireplace, too, giving it that slight glimpse back to the last occupants final years here. If only I'd had my wide angle lens back then, to really get these bedrooms in view. 

There's also a small bathroom.

So while we can surmise that Bill, Ester and their entourage were living here in the early 20th Century, my sources indicate that a Mr Bull also lived in one of the houses in 1939 with his wife Lilian, and their son who was born in 1936.

The 1911 census says that Mr Bull grew up in Ireland with his parents and brother. His father, who was known as Old Man Bull, was a gamekeeper to the Irish Nationalist politician Edward King-Harman, who passed away in 1888.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

The above photo shows Old Man Bull and his family in Ireland. Our Mr Bull is the little boy on the right. His brother on the far left would travel to America, while his sister standing on the chair would go to live in Liverpool. 

 While just the one Bull is said to have lived in this particular house, it seems that Old Man Bull moved to this area too, likely after his employer passed away. There are pictures of him with his Labrador, Patch, chilling on a nearby hill.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Old Man Bull passed away in 1942, but our Mr Bull, the occupant of half of this house, became very prominent to the locality as a gamekeeper. In 1940 he organised the Home Guard Dance at the local village hall, and he also had his sister Connie and niece Sylvia come to stay during the war, when they were evacuated from Liverpool. 

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

There are three generations of Bull in this photo. Old Man Bull, is wife, his daughter, and little Sylvia down from Liverpool to escape the Luftwaffe. All of them have probably set foot in this house. 

 

 Back down stairs, the kitchen is surprisingly pristine.

 

 

Relatively speaking, anyway. It's still fucked, but if you were going to use this house for shelter during a rainstorm, this is the room you'd use.

 

 

There's still some stuff here left behind by the last occupant. 

 

 

And there are still wall tiles. 

 

But now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the toilet.

 

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

 

 

Right in the middle, we have this room. This, I think, is where the two houses connected. The other half of the house is on an incline, meaning that going up these stairs takes us to the ground floor of the house next door. At some point in the early 20th Century, the two halves were separated to make two separate homes.

 

Let's head upstairs.  

 

 

Here's the front door of the other half of the house. They had a cat!  

As we can see, someone has been in here and ripped out the copper piping from the floor.

 

One inconsistency in the houses timeline comes with the Carpenter family. Walter Carpenter was born in 1897, and his wife Alice was born in 1909. They were married in 1927 at the local church and seem to have been local to this area for their entire lives. Allegedly they lived here at one point, but I cannot find any census data to support that, and it bugs me somewhat. What I do know is that John and Ester knew the Carpenters, and that they got along.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

The image shows Alice Carpenter and her daughter Beryl, holding her grandson Baby John. I'm not sure when it was taken, but Baby John was born in 1957 so presumably it was around then.

I'm not sure how the Carpenters fit into all this, but since John and Ester knew them, then if they did live at this house then it was likely shortly after Mr Bull left in the later 20th Century. They were definitely living elsewhere in 1939. 

 

And I must digress slightly because the Carpenters have a rather interesting story concerning Walters brother, William, nicknamed Harry Bach, which is Welsh for Little Harry. Harry Bach was born in 1879, and while he was the eldest Carpenter child and raised alongside his siblings as one of them, he found out when he got married that he had actually been adopted. His mother had him out of wedlock, his biological father allegedly dying before they could tie the knot, and so the Carpenters took him in, as was tradition at the time. Single Mothers were a cultural no-no and it would remain that way well into the 20th Century.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

So that's him on the left there, kneeling. He was a gamekeeper for the local hotel, so likely knew the coachman John.

There's a story attached to Harry Bach that I quite like. One day in 1901 a rich toff bet him fifty guineas that he couldn't catch a specific amount of fish on the nearby lake. Harry Bach said that he didn't have that much money to bet, so the toff offered to just give it to him if he could catch that many fish. Harry Bach did so, and won the fifty guineas. The following day, the toff returned and said that now that Harry Bach had the fifty guineas to bet, he bet him once again that he couldn't catch a specific number of fish. Once again, Harry Bach won and now had one hundred guineas. He decided to use the money to elope with the love of his life. Their daughter Ethel was born later that year.

That's such a lovely story.

 

There's more of the same in this side of the house, really. The ground floor fireplace isn't quite as impressive as the one "next door" but it still has character. It still gives a homely vibe to the room.

 

 

A few other names have been associated with the house too, but it's very difficult to find any verifying information. Among them are Nesta and Elfyn, who were apparently shepherds, which indicates that they probably lived here as employees to the home owners. But once again, I can't find any documents to verify them.

Also, I didn't realise until I researched this placejust how much a Christian upbringing has ruined the mental image of shepherds for me, along with anal sex, because I always picture them as the bible does, with flowy robes and long grey beards. In fact everyone in the bible just looks like a less-happy Jesus. They were there at the nativity, only the most well known bible story of all time, all beardy and robe-flowy, and that's just what springs to mind when I picture shepherds now.

I seriously doubt any 20th Century shepherds wore long flowy robes. I kinda feel like the look is a bit of a trip hazard.

But I digress.

 

There's another room with a fireplace, somehow feeling much more ominous. It feels like it's going to collapse if I so much as sneeze.

 

 

Both Mr Bull and Johns family were living at the houses on the 3rd July 1953 when there was a storm so severe that the entire area flooded. Local papers at the time tell of how some farm workers were only able to survive by clambering onto a bulldozer. John and Ester, it's said, were marooned at the farm until the flood water subsided. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 And here's a photo from the time, albeit probably a day or two after the storm. Given the 1950s photo quality I'm unable to actually identify any of the humans in the image, but it's still cool to see this house over half a century ago, sealed off from the world by flood water. 

I'm not sure when the Bulls left, but following John's death in 1969, both of houses seem to have been occupied by his quantiful offspring. I'm not entirely sure who was the big cheese of the household, or the "head" as the census data likes to say, purely because I haven't delved too deeply at this point. These are people who are in living memory of their descendants. Their individual deaths range from 1986 to 2000. That's too raw for me. I'm a historian, not a stalker. Let the family have their secrets.

 

 

Although apparently one of Johns offspring decorated the house with taxidermy fox heads, which is pretty interesting.

 

Here's a letter from the energy supplier, dated 2011. 

Moving on upstairs...

 

So this is the second upstairs bit. I assume, prior to the split, that such a design was because of the servants quarters, but I might be wrong.

 

 

Really it's just a load of tiny bedrooms that make me wish I'd had my wide angle lens. 

 

 

Here we have what's probably the master bedroom. 

 

 

So as we wrap up, thanks to me future urban explorers and youtubers know what names they need to claim have inexplicably come through on their ouija boards, or whatever. And yet I won't get a cut of their ad revenue. For shame. But given that history only ever talks about the rich and the famous, I'm quite glad I could shine a spotlight on the average joes of the Victorian era and early 20th Century.

The local area does actually have a few ghost stories. In particular, the road near this house is said to be haunted by "Yspryd y Gro," who allegedly throws mud and dirt at people who pass by. Intriguingly it's name translates to "Spirit of the Cave," which means there might be one around here that could make a good future mooch. 

One final stop remains, and that's the toilet.

 

If it isn't obvious, this is how I got in! It's certainly not the most flattering means of entry. 

 

But that's about it for this place. The house is a ruin, and visually it's very unappealing. But when we can put names and faces to a house, even one as fucked as this one, it brings it to life. We can imagine this once being a family home. This all mattered to someone once, and did so for about two hundred years, and it's sad to see it like this now. With a bit of love, this could become a family home once again, but it seems that's unlikely to happen.

My next couple of blogs will be houses in my local area, one of which is known in urbex circles, and given an illustrious nickname that is the pinnacle of imagination, exemplifying the finest minds of our generation. They call it... Fireplace Cottage! Wow! 

This blog has been brought to you by two-legged human. 

And if you like it, and don't want to miss my next one, the best chance for you is to follow my social media accounts. It sucks because their algorithms don't allow me to reach even half of the people who follow me, but we can try! I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Vero, Reddit, Twitter and Threads. 

It's like owning cancer. But check them out if you want.

 

Thanks for reading!