Derelict bungalow

Today I'm checking out this abandoned bungalow that we swung by for a quick mooch while we were in the area. It's got quite the ominous vibe, poking out of the foliage, practically invisible from the road unless you know it's there. And 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. Nobody cares about this place. It is abandoned in the absolute literal definition of the word. 

 

But that's not to say it isn't sad. Abandoned houses were still homes once, and are big glorified memorials to someones former life. They're absolutely deserving of the utmost respect. But when they've seemingly been left for decades, they do bring about a sense of intrigue. Why has nobody returned to take care of this?

 

Slipping inside was a piece of cake. The door is off its hinges and propped up against the hallway wall. The central hallway leads to five rooms, with two doors on either side and a fifth at the very end. The floor is covered in books, newspapers and other clutter. At no point during my time in this house did my feet touch the floor. Evidently the house has been ransacked. 

 

 

Check it out! This newspaper talks about President Bush coming to power. It says he's the 41st President, which means it's referring to George Bush senior, dating this rag at 1989. 

 

But if that's not an exciting enough relic, check this one out!

 

This one is from 1938 and it's talking about the Nazis, and Czech refugees. This is amazing!

Unfortunately it's been ripped a bit, so unfolding it didn't give us the full headline, but it's still cool to see. This is the final year before the UK declared war on Germany. The Nazis were swinging their dick all over Europe, and everything was reaching boiling point. This has so much historic significance. I can totally picture the occupant of this house, an average person with an average life, reading about all this and dreading that another world war was around the corner. It must have been a worrying time.

The first room is pretty dilapidated, with the roof caving in, and rubble all over the floor. There's a couple of books dotted around still, and a little table next to the fireplace, covered in ceiling rubble. At some point perhaps this would have been considered an abandoned time capsule, still fully furnished, exactly as its owner had left it when they passed away. But then nature got in, and humans looted the place, and over many years or even decades, it ended up like this.

But there's no graffiti and that is pretty cool. Apart from the fact that it's trashed, it's all natural decay.

 

Of course the defining feature of this room is the huge pile of newspapers on the table. Either this particular occupant was a hoarder or the Covid toilet paper frenzy drove this person to some desperate alternatives. 

 

There's a few more books over here in this box. These are all crime novels, with the most recent one being published in 1964.

Here's a newspaper from 1993. "Fifteen people were held after a huge police operation in Stoke-on-Trent against the deadly drug, Crack."

Was Crack a new thing in 1993??? That doesn't seem right, but this paper is phrasing it as if it's some new thing that few people know about.

There are some corduroy trousers hanging on the door handle, seriously decaying, with some moldly bits hanging down. But what's interesting is that two different colours are here. The side facing us is covered in dust, making it grey, but the side facing the window reveals that these are actually bright green.

The main attraction of this room is the stained glass windows. This place must have looked lovely once.

Across the hallway we have this similarly trashed room. It's really difficult to ascertain what this room would have been, because everything that's in this house has been randomly strewn all over the place.

 

 

But there is an ash tray on the table and I get the feeling that this is an authentic placement. Somehow despite everything, this has managed to stay where it was left. 

 

 

And on the floor there's some false teeth. Yum! Whoever lived here was obviously very old and probably a bit of a hoarder. Electoral registers indicate that one person lived here between 2001 and 2011, but 2011 is the maximum time they would have been here for. For all I know, they may have passed away as early as 2002. Given the date of certain artifacts, I definitely can't see this occupant surviving long into the current century. This house isn't visible from the street, in person or in streetview, and that includes all the years Streetview has to offer, right back to 2009! It's been abandoned for a hell of a long time.

 

There's crockery in front of the fireplace which makes me wonder if this was the dining area. That seems a little unusual given that it's the furthest room from the kitchen, but in a bungalow with all the rooms orbiting a tiny central hallway, all the rooms are within spitting distance anyway. 

Next to this we have the bedroom.

 

 

The bedroom is absolutely trashed, but in a really photogenic way. But again, it's kinda sad to see. All of this mattered to someone once. It's all that remains of someones home. It's been the backdrop of so many memories, but now it's truly abandoned. Whoever tore through here did so years ago, and everything has just been left. Nobody was there to re-secure the premises and tidy up.

I guess in a way the intrigue taps into a common fear humans have of dying alone, with no family to take care of things when you're gone.

 

 

The fireplace has a framed picture above it, but it's far too decayed and covered in dirt to make out what it's a picture of.

 

 

The bed is just as cluttered as the floor, absolutely covered in the former occupants belongings. 

 

 

Here we have some old VHS tapes, all of which are history documentaries, next to the autobiography of Christmas Humphreys. I've actually never heard of Christmas Humphreys but a quick Google search revealed that he was a British barrister who converted to Buddhism. His former home as also been converted into a Buddhist temple. His name is a bit weird, but apparently a traditional one in his family. He preferred to go by Toby, and that's absolutely fair enough.

 

Here's a magazine from 1938! It's a little torn up but still pretty cool. 

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

The bathroom is similarly trashed. Whoever ransacked this place seemingly tried to steal the bath.

The toilet has been ripped out too!

Here it is under the bath. Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

What's weird is that there's still stuff in the bathroom cabinet. It just seems utterly bonkers that the house has been tossed about but this has remained relatively untouched.

Onto the lounge...

 

The lounge is pretty much more of the same. I can't even see the floor in here. I'm just walking on broken furniture and clutter. But there are still books on the shelves, giving us a glimmer of what this place used to look like. 

Curiously there's some rope in the corner tied to the remains of a cupboard and connected to the lounge window, preventing it from being pulled open. So evidently at one point there was an attempt at securing the building. But who did that and where are they now?

There's a record player propped up against the wall here.

Looking at the books, we have a few crossword dictionary's, thesauruses and a book of anagrams, all of which helps paint a picture of the kind of person who lived here.

Check out that big grey TV lying screen-down. It's so weird to think that within my lifetime, televisions were big enough to serve as a second settee at family gatherings. I love that we've advanced so far and so fast in some areas, but America still doesn't have crumpets. Our species really does have some backwards priorities.

 

Here we have a cassette box.

 

I have to wonder why it is trashed. I mean on the surface level, I'd say it's been looted. But everything is still here. Nobody has stolen anything. It's as if someone came here, decided to throw everything around, and then just left. It all seems rather pointless. 

A door at the back of the lounge leads into the kitchen...

The kitchen is tiny, and still has quite a lot of stuff inside.

Look at these shelves! Here's the time capsule! This cupboard is likely the closest thing in the whole house to how it was when the owner was still alive. Some of the cans are still sealed. There's still vinegar here, and that shit lasts forever so it's probably still good to put on your food. 

No I won't put that to the test. 

Most endearingly there's a hand-written list of recipes in the top corner.

And then there's this egg timer, which is still functional, as you can see. I tipped it upside-down before I took the photo. I enjoyed this little thing a little too much. In fact I almost nicknamed this place "Egg timer house," before quickly de-railing that train of thought before it got too far from the station. 

In urban exploring, places do tend to get nicknames, and they tend to be either attempts at sounding poetic but end up sounding cringe (Cavern of Lost Souls, Village of Bones, House of Tears) or they seem to pick one generic item from the house that numerous houses have, and name the house after that (Red Dress Manor, Fireplace cottage) And then there's also a weird abundance of "Murder Mansions," (except for the one house that actually did have a murder in it, but I digress) but I'm at a point now where such names just sound repetitive and dull. I have hemorrhoids that are more original than the British urbex scene. And prettier. I just want to call places what they are. This is a derelict bungalow. 

And there's one more final stop!

 

The door at the back of the kitchen leads out to this tiny outdoor-ish toilet. This isn't actually uncommon in old houses, to have a toilet next to the back door. But that tends to be in larger houses. It's a bit weirder here because this is a tiny bungalow where the other bathroom is literally three strides away, through the tiny kitchen and tiny lounge, and then right there on the left. At least it would be three strides if the home wasn't full of trip hazards. If there were no walls, and a person was sat on each toilet, the person sat on this one would be able to chuck rolled up balls of toilet roll at the back of the other persons head. 

 

So this shot is taken through the toilets external window, and my friend Lee has kindly decided to pull the door closed-ish in a hand gesture that does not look the slightest bit comfortable, because this door just perpetually swings open, obstructing my shot of this sump pump, which is very reminiscent of the ones we see in old ROC nuclear monitoring bunkers. It's used for pumping flood water back to the surface, which raises the interesting implication that this bungalow has a cellar.

But I ain't looking for it. There's no door leading downwards, so it must be a trap door somewhere in the house, and I can't even see the floor. Unfortunately we must call it a day on this place.

So to conclude, it's cute, it's wrecked, it's an abandoned house that actually looks abandoned, and that is actually a breath of fresh air in a universe where urban exploring as degraded to some mad race to showcase the most pristine "time capsules" by photographing places that have only been empty for a year and still have electricity. I'm not about that. Give me some actual decay. I want to see magazines from before I was born, not unexpired cartons of milk.

Oh God, is that the next urban exploring brag? "I was there before the milk went off."

But hey-ho. I'm talking to hear myself speak when it comes to the questionable antics of the urbex world. Nothing I say will change anything. The best I can do is enjoy the hobby in my own way and get on with my excellent life.

Speaking of which, I've got one more house to cover here before I'm focusing on my re-invasion of Europe over on my travel blog. 

In the meantime, to get regular updates about this blog, the best way is by following me on social media. At the moment I'm focusing on lesser-known sites like Bluesky and Vero, which definitely need a stronger userbase, but you can still find me on the usual dens of shittery, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Twitter. Thanks for reading!