Foliage house

This little abandoned house makes for a pretty intriguing sight, almost entirely swallowed by nature, and easily missed by the casual observer. Naturally I had to take a peek.

I think I've gone over this enough, but abandoned houses aren't really popular with the older, more serious urbexers who abseil down mineshafts, climb cranes and swim out to shipwrecks, and that's okay. They're not really challenging, but I think there's also some negative association with abandoned houses because they're popular with the trashier kind of urbexer, who tops up their JSA with Ebay sales of a dead grandmas stolen trinkets. Nobody really wants to be associated with that. 

I'm not too fussy with my urbex content, although I am somewhat anomalous. For me, urbex is about documenting places before they're gone, and enjoying the history that the general public don't really get to see. I think that abandoned houses, above all other urbex spots, should be treated with respect. Houses are abandoned because the occupant passed away. This was someone's home once. The house is a memorial to their life. Urbexers who steal from such places, or rearrange, or slather them in stickers advertising their youtube channels, are disgusting. We have laws against sibling romance specifically to stop this kind of person existing. What's going on? 

But anyway, enough pontificating! Let's check this place out. 

A quick scramble through a window, made comical by the discovery that the door was open, brought me into this incredibly cluttered former lounge. It's clearly been ransacked, and it's also clearly been set on fire too, but there's still enough stuff here to make it interesting. 

This picture on the wall shows the cottage before the foliage took it over. It's simply named "The Cottage," which doesn't give me much to work with from a research standpoint.

There's a few trinkets above the fireplace. 

The fireplace also has this random dog face embedded in it, which is pretty quirky and a nice touch. 

I do see the appeal of abandoned houses. There's something intriguing and mysterious about them. There's a sadness involved in that nobody was around to clear up their dead relatives belongings, and that gives it a morbid curiosity. 

The only thing I really dislike about houses is the lack of a decent history. Long term readers will know that I love flinging myself headfirst down a rabbit hole and regurgitating information here on the blog. But what's to say here? It was lived in until it wasn't. That's not particularly exciting. 

Having said that, I have had great fun with ruined houses that haven't been lived in for decades, tracking the family back through the 1800s. But in a house like this, it's all bit too recent. There are probably still people who remember the occupant, and doing a blog about them isn't really history.

I think the appeal of abandoned houses like this is really in the vibe. 

To be honest, the fire-blackened walls do make the place look kinda cool. I do enjoy decay, and this place has loads, despite being mostly furnished.

The toy spaceship on the right is called the Astronave, and it's from a Spanish toy company called Madelman, who produced articulated figures from 1968 to 1983. It wasn't all space stuff. They did army figures, cowboy figures, pirate figures, and whatnot. The sci-fi stuff was in their "Cosmic" line which was in the 1980s. 

I guess this means that whoever lived here had a millennial child. 

The occupant also played guitar. 

Onto the dining room... 

Its a tip. The dining table is buried somewhere under all that clutter. 

The blackened walls are actually really interesting. There's clearly been a fire here, but nothing is burned. It's like someone had a controlled bonfire and cleaned it up afterwards. 

There are still wine glasses in the cupboard. 

Onto the kitchen...

We're all lucky that stench can't be transferred through photos. The kitchen had a particularly nasty odour, accompanied by the sound of running water. A pipe had burst somewhere in the house, and everything back here was rather moist. 

 

I do like the "Worlds Greatest Dad" mug placed here, like he was ready for his morning coffee before he vacated for the final time. 

 

Moving on from the kitchen, there was this painting on the stairs. It's called "The Pie eaters" by Bartolome Murillo. 

There are some pictures of naked ladies too, looking a little too clean amidst the decay. There is someone in Shropshire who leaves adult magazines in abandoned places for some reason. I've seen this a few times now. I don't know why they do it. It seems a bit disrespectful, like creating a false narrative about the former occupant that I'm not sure any surviving family would appreciate.

But more importantly, check out the SNES controller! That's amazing!

There are still keys hanging up.

Moving on upstairs...

Everything's considerably more decayed up here. The damp is prevalent. The floorboards are weak. The bathroom seems to be situated directly above the kitchen, and whatever burst pipe is making things moist down there has also made the floorboards weak up here. 

So let's check out the best part of any abandoned building, the bathroom...

 

Mmmmm!!! 

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

Onto the bedrooms!

Somewhere underneath all this clutter is the bed of the child who used to live here. It looks a mess on the surface, but on closer inspection, there's still a lot to see. 

 

Next to the monitor is a Ladybird Transformers book. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it in my blogs before, but I collect vintage Transformers, including the comics and books. I happen to have this exact book, signed by the artist who I ran into purely through happenstance. I told him to stay put while I dashed home, grabbed some of the books and returned to him to get them signed. He told me that they were the first paid illustrative work he had ever done in his life, and the last thing he'd ever expected to be asked to sign. Which means I'm probably the only person to have signed copies of them, which is a small, insignificant claim to fame, but a claim to fame nonetheless! 

The books also came with cassette tapes that narrated the story, and I still have a couple of those too. Although whether they work or not is a complete mystery!

We can also see a Power Rangers annual and a Robocop game. It looks like this kid had a great childhood. It's very nostalgic for me. Although I did raid Car Boot Sales for vintage toys and video games as a child, so none of this was still in official retail when I was young. This kid was probably older than me.

 

 

The age range of the toys, with the likes of Power Rangers, and Transformers alongside Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper, makes me think more than one child lived here. I can't see a child of ten having this wallpaper unless they shared a room with a younger sibling.

 

This was particularly cool. It's an old Transformers organiser, for storing books and cassettes. I'm guessing this dates back to 1984 because it depicts Optimus Prime and Megatron toy-accurately, and not in the character models established in the cartoon. But I might be wrong! It's a cool find anyway. 

Onto the last bedroom...

This one is somewhat tidier than the rest of the house, although that isn't saying much. This would have been the parents room many years ago. 

 

Here we can see some obvious signs of previous urbexers setting up a shot. Who stores a Christmas advent calendar upright on a speaker on a bookshelf like this? 

Some of these books look pretty interesting.

 

 

Here we have an old VHS player. 

 

 

And check this out! It's some writing, alongside a vintage photograph. It looks like a song or poem. I'm not sure what to make of the photo, but if the family had children in the 1970s then the parents may well have been adolescents in the sixties, so one of these girls could be the woman who lived here. 

 

 

There's an old brain teaser puzzle here.

I gotta admit, it does seem like the people who lived here were really interesting. We have guitars, books, song lyrics, and other signs that this house was occupied by intelligent, creative people. 

 

 

Although that theory isn't really helped by the presence of the Daily Heil. 

Newspapers are useful in urbex though, because they can give us a rough idea of when a building was last occupied. This one is dated 2010, and predictably fear mongering. Do any of you guys remember that time foreigners caused the Queens head to disappear off British stamps? 

Oh yeah! German-descended King Charles has! Silly me!

Back to the house!

 

 

Some of the previous occupants outfits have been hung up on display. 

 

 

There are some old photographs here. The one of the boy is dated 1953 and labelled "Geoffrey." He could very well be the father of the children who lived here. 

I decided to do a little bit of digging, because the full name is there, albeit blurred out. Geoffrey did live in this house. He was born in 1945, and he passed away in 2021 at the age of 76. I won't be digging any further because it's too recent and his sons could well be still alive. I'm a renegade historian, not a stalker.

 

But that's all I have for this place.

To conclude, it's a nice enough house. It gives exactly what anyone would expect- two bedrooms, a smelly bathroom and an even smellier kitchen, and just enough trinkets to provide the inbred more morally dubious urbexers with Ebay trinkets, which is precisely why I won't be saying exactly where it is, although in urbex circles I do believe that ship has sailed. But I would rather not be part of the problem. If there's already a fire, there's no need to throw paraffin on it. Perhaps that's not the best metaphor in this case.

My next blogs are very small, local things. They probably won't appeal to the average modern urbexer (because there's nothing to steal) but the history is lovely and I will be diving into it. It's the kind of thing I love. 

In the meantime, the best way to stay updated with my blog is to follow me on social media. I'm active on the main shit three, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and their weird hatechild, Threads. I'm also on the sites that aren't as popular but seem to be making an effort to save us from these algorithmic hellscapes, Bluesky and Vero. Find me, add me, we'll be buddies. 

Thanks for reading!