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.
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!
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