Cider House

Check out this cute little wreck! It was nicknamed "Cider House" because of an old cider press in its yard, as well as its placement in an orchard. It's a very gorgeous house, obviously ancient, and definitely in need of saving. I can't save it, but I can preserve it with pictures and try to tell its story.  

You may remember, ages ago I mentioned that my camera wasn't focusing like it should and would probably die at the worst possible moment. That moment came in Spain, which I will cover eventually on my travel blog. This was my first adventure back on British soil, reunited with my opulent entourage, and I was armed only with a Samsung. How the mighty have fallen. I'm generally opposed to using a mobile phone to take photos, mainly because I have dyspraxia and struggle to hold anything steady. I could, in theory, use the disability card every time someone tells me that my photos are terrible, and really ruin their day. But the only people who have ever done that use fake Facebook profiles so their lives must already be pretty terrible. 

My earliest blog posts were taken on a Samsung and they were pretty terrible too. But mobile phone technology has improved in the past decade, so luckily these shots aren't as terrible as I was dreading. Of course I had to download an app to give my phone camera additional abilities. And doesn't that just boil the piss a bit? The hardware can do it. The software just isn't there for it. 

Its almost as if they want the product to have its inevitable obsolescence built into it, so that they can sell the next product with minimal actual changes. Wily little bastards.

Anyway! Let's check out this house!

The house is being gradually taken over by this prickly flower. My partner is a bit more knowledgeable on this sort of thing, and has identified this as Houseleek, an appropriate name for something growing on a house that is open to the elements. I'm pretty sure it's an invasive species but I might be wrong. 

And as you can see, access to the house is a pretty easy. The entire wall has fallen away. 

Digging up any history on this place has been a bit of a challenge, but I was able to find some of the old owners through  census records, and from there everything else just fell into place.

The 1851 census lists the occupant as Ann, an eighty year old widow, and head of the household. I'm guessing the head of the household was her husband prior to this, but he passed away in 1836. Seemingly in order to keep Ann company, her carpenter son James moved in, and brought his family, consisting of his wife Hannah, and their two adorable semen demons, Elizabeth and William. Their ages were listed as three and one on the 1851 census so it's entirely possible that they were born here. The 1841 census shows James and Hannah living elsewhere, so there's a ten year gap where their move took place

. 

Despite the fact that the house is positively dinky, James and Hannah decided that it wasn't crowded enough, and little Emma was born in 1852.

Ann passed away in 1864, but James and Hannah continued living here, raising their children. 

There are a few publications from the era that make reference to the family. It's not always flattering, but it's never anything particularly evil. William was charged with trespassing in 1869, when he was nineteen, and there's a few mentions of silly transgressions like failing to keep a dog on a lead or something. The mainstream media hadn't discovered drag queens, transgender people, Meghan Markle or brown people yet, so they had to scrape the barrel for that scandal. 

This picture is peeling off the ceiling. It's a photo of a ship called Aquitania that had its maiden voyage in 1914. Why has this been stuck face-up on the ceiling?

One by one, James and Hannah's children moved away. Elizabeth married a London-based jeweller in 1871, and Emma married a labourer in 1878. William didn't stick around either, although he did learn the carpentry trade from his father. He eventually married and moved away to be a carpenter elsewhere, although he did drop off his son Charles to keep James and Hannah company. William and Jane had three other children, William Jr, Clara and John, so why Charles was sent to live here with the grandparents is anyone's guess. 

James passed away in 1896, and I presume Hannah passed away around the same time. William moved back in with his wife Jane, showing up in the census records for 1901. He's the third generation of his family to live here, at least to my knowledge. He didn't bring all of his children, mainly because most of them were adults at this point and had their own homes. But his three youngest, Alice, Frederick and Herbert moved in. Interestingly, in 1911 William and Jane's oldest child, William Jr, moved in with his wife Mary and young daughter Gwen. Perhaps they had issues with their tenancy and needed a place to stay. It's an awfully small house for this many people, but this wasn't actually uncommon for the lower class in this era. Victorian and Edwardian households were famously cramped. It wasn't hygienic and it certainly didn't help the child mortality rate.  

Speaking of which, Frederick died in 1905 at the age of fifteen. His brother, Herbert, would name his own son after him. 

Despite all of these children who had grown up here, it seems it was actually William's son John who ended up living here for a bit, despite having been an adult and living in Birmingham when his father moved in. John had married a woman named Margaret, and worked in a slaughter house. According to records, they came to live here in the 1920s after William and Jane passed away. Curiously their stay was only brief. I guess they'd built a life out in the city, so a rural cottage was something of a culture shock. 

I have photos of most of thefamily, but I feel like this one of Margaret surrounded by her children is probably the most relevant. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

John had trouble with the law in 1913 when he stole some bacon from his boss and gave it to the landlady of his local pub. His boss said that he was usually of good character but prone to drinking. What's really interesting and kinda funny is that the newspaper headline said "Woman fined for receiving bacon," villainising the woman he gave the bacon to rather than the man who actually stole the bacon. 

This definitely seems to be the most interesting of the downstairs rooms. 

There's no graffiti or any other kind of vandalism. It was just left to nature, and that is awesome.

There's a woman's shoe here. 

Check out this old stove!

Weird to think the owners once used this to make a cup of tea for the last time, put it down and never picked it up again. 

It's fairly obvious, what with the house being derelict in an active orchard, that the house was mainly intended for the occupancy of a farm employee rather than the landowner themselves. This led me to researching the past occupants of nearby farms in the hope of identifying the past landowners. And while it was ultimately futile, I did find some interesting stories. There was a chap called Albert living in a nearby farm in 1910, and his ancestor George was still living there before he died in 1996. 

Albert seems to get into a lot of trouble with his housekeeper, Mrs Horton. In 1910 they were both charged with being drunk and disorderly, and in another case, Mrs Horton burst into the local school to beat up a school teacher for caning her child, and encouraged Albert to get gobby with the same teacher when they saw him in public. Mrs Horton and Albert were both fined, but I do kinda see Mrs Horton's point. Her daughter had apparently been caned several times a day for five weeks, often for silly things like struggling at maths, and that should be enough to make any parent snap. 

But, as recent events will also prove, nobody in power cares about children's welfare, especially if they're little girls.

The Hortons actually lost another child in 1911. Their twelve-year-old daughter passed away due to heart failure attributed to some surgery she'd had a couple of years ago.

These people didn't live in this house, but they live in close proximity, and these events absolutely had to be known to the family here. 

In 1939 and throughout the 1940s a chap named William lived here. He had been born in Wales in 1909 but moved to Shropshire and married a woman named Mary in 1932. William worked as a farm labourer, which seems to indicate that he was living here on an employee basis in exchange for his work on the farm. 

William's father, Henry, also came to live with them in the 1930s. William's mother Martha had passed away in 1934, so perhaps that was why. I happen to have a photo of Henry and Martha. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Henry also had a few media mentions for silly things, having quite a few run-ins with the law for trespassing, hunting animals on private land, and in 1909 he was fined for allowing his donkey to run amok in Ludlow, a story that made the paper with the headline "a straying ass."

In 1881, Martha was discharged from a battered women's refuge, with notable descriptive features being a scar on her forehead and one front tooth missing. It doesn't really look good for Henry's reputation here, but I soon discovered that there was more than one Martha living in the Ludlow area around this time, with the same surname, so I don't know for sure if it was the same Martha. The name pops up a few more times for different misadventures too. One of these mentions tells of how Martha was done for theft. Another story tells of how she was charged with abusive language, and in another story she was fined for not sending her children to school. Given the there was more than one woman in the area with the same name, any one of these could be attributed to Henry's wife, or none of them could be. For all we know there could be a whole gang of Martha's. Ludlow's very own Marthia. 

It's time to move on upstairs! 

In the 1950s two women lived here, a mother and daughter named Rose and Hannah. Rose was born in 1867 and widowed in 1929, whereas Hannah was born in 1892 and widowed in 1948. I have a photo of Hannah's husband Charles, but none of her. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

It is nice that Rose and Hannah, both widowed, were able to live together and keep each other company in their final years. Rose passed away in 1957, and Hannah continued living here until her death in 1979. I'm guessing the shoes dotted around were hers. Just think, one day she wore those for the last time, and they're still here unclaimed long after her death.

From what I can tell, the house has been vacant ever since. 

There are two bedrooms, which makes the size of the previous occupant families pretty terrifying, but for Hannah and Rose it looks like it was quite cosy. It's up here in the bedrooms that things start to feel like a home. It's here that Rose and Hannah become real people, when we can picture them going about the mundane to's and fro's of human existence. And as surprising as it might be to hear from a globe-trotting adventurer whose long-term survival in this world is all down to luck, the mundane stuff matters. It's human. Rose and Hannah were ordinary people who had dreams and aspirations, and had endured real hardship. 

All that's left of them now is this house, slowly rotting away, and holding only the faintest reminders that they were ever here.

I think on some level nobody wants to be forgotten, and yet it is inevitable that someday we all will be. There's a few among us who achieve a longer spat of fame or notoriety, but time is infinite and in 10,000 years they'll be forgotten to. But I really love digging up the history of those ordinary folks who now only exist as names on paper and in graveyards. 

The truth is that being able to tell the story of the deceased is both a privilege and a responsibility. Some urbexers grasp that while others will just try to convince you that they met the owners ghost for Youtube clicks. And that is the difference between a good urbexer and, well, trash. 

This dressing table was a sad sight. Decades ago, this would have been where Hannah sat to do her makeup. 

There's a glass ash tray nearby. 

Onto the next bedroom...

As with the other room, all that's left are the wardrobe, dressing table, drawers and a bed. All of which tells us that this was lived in, but doesn't give us any personality. All the personal stuff is long gone. 

Similarly long gone is the bedroom wall!

It's weird to think that either Hannah or Rose slept in this bed, and would be mortified to see this room as it is now. 

That's about it for the house itself. Let's check out the out-buildings. 

Over there is a wash copper, which is basically a retro washing machine. 

And here's an old mangle for squeezing water out of wet laundry. 

And over here are hundreds of old crates. 

It seems that the orchard was providing fruit for various retailers. One of these crates is labelled "Frank Idiens & Sons, Evesham." This was a fruit and vegetable retailer that has long since disappeared. 

C E Dipper likely refers to Charles Eric Dipper, a resident of Tenbury who lived from 1913 to 1989. With a little more digging I was able to find a news article that pictured a "Eric Dipper" that referred to him as a greengrocer, so evidently he also got some of his stock from this orchard too.

(Image not mine)

Peeking out behind Eric is his brother "Austin," although I have it on good authority that the media (surprising nobody) got his name wrong. His wife is related to Hannah, which adds a family twist to the entire arrangement that's quite wholesome.

Of course, when multiple families co-exist in the same rural area for centuries, I'm more surprised when their DNA doesn't end up sloshed together at multiple points. The Dippers ancestors were also related to the carpenter family that lived here a century or so earlier. It's not surprising at all. 

And really, to me these crates and these family business arrangments just add another layer of sadness to the place. We're not just seeing the remnants of someone's home. We're also seeing the remnants of someone's community. This orchard provided food for some local businesses and some less-local ones. The local ones are remembered fondly by the generation that came before the massive supermarkets,  before the weekly food shop involved trying to wave down a grumpy old bat and interrupting their valuable conversation because the self-help thing says "Unexpected item in bagging area" for no reason. 

This is all a remnant of the old world. These crates were ready to deliver stock to business owners who died some forty-ish years ago. I bet if you'd gone into Dippers for your fruit he would have greeted you with a smile. 

There's an old cider press here, which is what inspired the title of the blog. This thing is pretty cool. 

The orchard itself is suffering from mistletoe. I've never seen this growing in the wild before, and I didn't know it was a parasite. It's typically associated with Christmas and smooching, having its roots in Norse and Celtic mythology as a symbol of love and fertility, but it actually leaches off other trees and steals their nutrients, and can eventually kill them. Which does sound like a lot of relationships, now that I think about it. I totally see the correlation. 

That's all I've got. 

I actually really like this house. It's beautiful in its decay, entirely natural with no vandalism. And despite being little more than a ruin, the house still has enough left behind to show us that is was once someone's home. Places like this are sad and intriguing, but ultimately worthy of more respect than any other kind of urbex spot.

Alas, they seldom get it.

My next few blogs will be a few small local things. The broken camera era will be short lived, somehow. In the meantime, if you like my blogs, the best way to stay updated is with my social media, despite my absolute hatred for it. I really want to promote the usage of apps like Vero and Cara, perfectly good Instagram alternatives for artists and photographers, and I'm also on Bluesky. But since most of us are still addicted to algorithmic bullshit, I can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for reading!