Abandoned Cottage

Today I'm checking out this tiny abandoned cottage in the countryside, and unfortunately I'm doing it at night time, which is less than ideal for stealth reasons, but we play the hand we've been dealt, and I happened to be here at this time of day. 

Abandoned houses have become an increasingly controversial topic in the urbex world, largely because those who care more about social media attention have a tendency to over-graze the pasture, and thereby have issues getting that precious dopamine. Consequently many "abandoned" houses that become popular in urbex have been empty for maybe six months, with the fact that the power is still on somehow being used for clickbait, and the family of the recently deceased former occupant watching in horror as every subsequent post about the house has fewer and fewer items and more stickers advertising someones social media. And that brings us to the point that a house with loads of things left behind will always be more popular with the urbex herd than a glorious mansion with photogenic architecture and fantastic history, but nothing inside that will fit inside, say, a backpack. Coincidence?

 

Personally I prefer the places that are truly abandoned. This house has been empty and unloved for nearly two decades. It's just been left to rot, and nobody is coming to save it. The fact that there's anything left to see is a mystery, and it's what makes places like this so compelling, more so than the sort that entertain the herd. I've done urbex for nearly thirteen years now, and I've done it under a few very simple rules: Don't force entry, leave everything as I find it, try not to negatively impact anyone, and don't disclose the location to those who would break any of these rules. (There is a fifth rule- when exploring anywhere that involves a boat, always wear a pirate hat, but that's not really relevant here.) 

These rules generally keep me going, and they're the reason some "urbexers" are currently facing legal action for plastering lame social media stickers all over a power station, and I am not.

There's a car parked on what used to be the driveway, but it's been smashed and encased in nature.

Slipping inside is relatively easy. The door is hanging off its hinges, in stark contrast to the windows, which are boarded up, echoing a time when someone did actually care about this place. The lower floor, consequently, has very little furniture.

But a quick look at the fireplace will reveal that I'm not actually on the floor of this house. It's just a pile of very tightly-packed rubble and litter. There could be all sorts of cool things buried under this mess, if anyone cares to dig.

There's a little retro TV here.

The kitchen/dining area is of particular interest, with its yellow and blue colour scheme and the ceiling light. And while most of the downstairs furniture seems to have been cleared out, there are a few things to see in here.

An ironing board.

There's a Beethoven record here. Whoever lived here must have liked their classical music.

The cupboards still have loads of canned goods, including cat food. The Arthur can is displaying the 1995 logo style, but the brand has totally vanished today. Arthur the cat actually has quite the saga, being the focal point of a 1960s controversy when rumours swept around that the reason he had to dip its paw and lick the food off was because the TV producers had removed his teeth.

The oven has seen better days, but I do love that cobwebbed pantry area.

There's also a photo in here. Could this be the former occupant of the house in her younger years? 

 

It's the human element that really makes abandoned houses sad. It's important to remember that this was someones home once. This house has seen many a Christmas and birthday. It was once the place that people looked forward to coming back to after a long day. They've likely passed away, and for some reason everything was left. No family came to claim any of this. It could be argued that they clearly moved some of the stuff out, but I'm more inclined to believe that the house has been ransacked. There's no reason why so much would go missing, but a photo of someone would remain, unless the photo wasn't valuable to whoever came to take stuff. 

But in the absence of anyone to take care of matters, an abandoned house essentially becomes a memorial to someones former life. As such it's rather heartbreaking to see them trashed and ruined. Its akin to vandalising a gravestone.

In the corner of one room is a rather dusty bookshelf.

Everything here is pretty old. "The Grove of Eagles" is one of the newer-looking books, and it was published in 1963.

"Below the Salt" was published in 1957, and "Queens Play" was published in 1964. A lot of these books seem to be historic fiction, taking place hundreds of years ago, about fictional characters during real-life events.

This book, "A new geography of Wales," isn't that new anymore! It was published in 1969. It could be quite interesting to flick through, and see what county borders have changed over the years.

There's a cat carrier next to the fireplace.

Moving on upstairs proved to be challenging. While it seems that there are plenty of steps, what I neglected to display was that the bottom half of the staircase is empty! This is all there is, and it starts just above waist-level. And even then that bottom step is looking quite precarious.

Fortunately I've never needed stairs to get upstairs, but given that the house is in such a serious state of decay, surely only an idiot would go up here.

Well... whoopsie! Guess I am an idiot. Let's see what we have.

The upstairs is similarly ransacked, but there's a little more to see. It's harder to get furniture down the stairs than it is to get it out through the front door, especially when the stairs are missing. As a result the upper floors have a lot more to offer.

Onto the best part of any abandoned building, the bathroom.

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

There are still things in the cabinet, which is pretty bonkers. There's some phyllosan there, which was commonly advertised as "keeping people fit over forty." An advert from 1937 claims:

"Modern conditions compel you to overspend yourselves. You are subjected to a degree of stress, anxiety and mental strain undreamed of by former generations. It's not your fault, but you must repay the debt. If you are feeling run down, overworked, devitalized, and starting to feel your age, start taking phyllosan tablets today!"

 

But what's interesting is how an advert from 1937 admits that people are overworked compared to days gone by, and is happily saying "Look, modern life is shit, so here's something to help." It's quite in contrast to scores of grumpy old sods on Facebook shrieking gammonically about how the younger generation is full of wusses for wanting to be paid adequately for working longer hours and whatnot. Here's an advert from eighty years ago, making the exact same points that are being made today.

It's almost as if every generation has been a bit shit.

 

Moving on... We have my favourite part of the house, the main bedroom.

It still has a bed in it, and pretty much every piece of furniture. It's easy to imagine how this place would have looked decades ago, back when the house was still being lived in.

As much as I would have loved to have a proper mooch around this room, the floor was sagging under my footsteps and I felt that if I ventured too far into the middle of the room, I would soon find myself in the one below.

There's a dressing table in the corner, where decades ago someone once sat to do her makeup before heading out.

And while the clothes seem to have all been taken, there are a few old possessions on the side.

There's an old jigsaw puzzle which appears to have once made a map of the UK. I'm amazed it's all still mostly in its tin, but what's especially noteworthy is that the image is printed onto wooden puzzle pieces, whereas today such puzzles are printed onto card.

There's an old medicine bottle on the side, and there's still tablets inside!

But that fluff... is that mold in there? Have the tablets exceeded their use-by date and actually grown fluff? I did a quick google search and it is possible for tablets to develop a fungal infection. Although, it is possible that someone has just shoved cotton wool into the bottle... but why would they?

Meanwhile on the bed we have a map of the Soviet Union, and English school work from 1959 to 1961. This is incredible! And it's just been left here. That's madness.

I personally prefer places with a history that I can research and a story that I can tell, and that's the main reason I stopped exploring as many abandoned houses. There's just nothing much to go on, narratively speaking. But it's the mystery that makes them appealing. Years ago someone passed away and left all of their belongings behind. Some of the belongings were taken away, the house trashed, and then it was all just forgotten and left to rot. I have no doubt that the condition of the stairs are the reason why the upper floors have more to show than the bottom ones, and that makes it even more intriguing, to think that so much can only be observed by a few. 

It is sad though, and that is why abandoned houses deserve the highest level of respect. They sadly don't always get that, but they do from me. 

That's all I've got today. My next couple of blogs will be similar small ones, but if you like the larger adventures then my non-local blog has loads of those. 

In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, follow me on Reddit, and also follow me on Twitter for some reason, and the hub of human misery that is Facebook. 

Thank you for reading!

Tiny Chapel

Today is another small post, but after some of the crazy adventures I've been having on my other blog, a few small ones are pretty welcome. Out in the countryside sits a tiny derelict chapel, and it's about as rural as it gets. I can't find much of it online. People describe a multitude of countryside walks and their routes, and it always says something like "Just up the road is a derelict chapel," but it doesn't offer much else. People acknowledge it, and treat it like just another landmark.

Slipping inside is pretty easy. There's no feat of dexterity, flexibility or stealth. I know some people like to make their urbex sound like Mission Impossible. I'm a bit more genuine. The door was unlocked. 

 

The chapel itself is quite pretty. 

I'm not religious. I regard God as the antagonist of the series of stories in which he features. The humans are happy just doing their own thing, and he comes along every few years and says "Do what I say, or I'll slap you," and next thing you know, someones dead, and we're told "That's where wanking gets you."

But I still think churches and chapels are pretty. I don't know why. There's just something attractive about them. Perhaps some part of me likes the idea of everyone uniformly facing one person and being told that everything will be okay, while getting a sore ass.

From prolonged sitting on the uncomfortable pews. Minds out of the gutter, people.

At a glance, the building appears to be structurally sound, but the bits of ceiling lying on the floor would indicate that it is slowly falling apart.

The chapel was built in 1875, although it was rebuilt in 1891. One slither of documentation mentions an older chapel just down the road closing around 1875 when the congregation moved here. The chapel is still labeled on maps in the 1940s and 1970s, which is quite surprising, really. I can't imagine it having much of a congregation by that point. 

 

Such rural chapels often served tiny isolated hamlets and farms in the era before motorised transport. Back then, a trip to town was something of a novelty. These rural communities were self-contained and isolated from the world. People would walk to the chapels on Sundays, not just out of religious beliefs but out of a social need too. This was where they caught up with their friends. 

With the introduction of motorised transport, and even the railway, the wider world was suddenly a lot more accessible. People had more opportunity to spread their wings a bit. And as a consequence of that, the tiny rural chapel gradually fell out of use and became redundant. There are literally hundreds out there, just unloved and crumbling away.

Street View shows the chapel still derelict in 2009, but I can't find the exact year of it closing.

 

In the entrance, coat hooks next to a stained glass window.

There's some nice features in the slowly collapsing ceiling.

And at the back of the chapel, two doors lead to a back room.

Well this is a sorry sight. Someone really hated this harmonium.

A children's toy. The kind you find in Doctors waiting rooms.

I'm not sure what purpose the back room would have served. Perhaps it was a little Sunday School. Perhaps while the parents attended service, their crotchfruit were entertained here. That would explain the toy.

Out on the chapels exterior we have a very British view of the chapel, with both a King George V Postbox, and a classic red phone box in shot. The post box was allegedly installed between 1910 and 1936. The phone box has a bit more significance. In rural areas, many old phone boxes have been preserved as defibrillators or even mini libraries, but this one is rare in that it still functions as a phone box. Street View from 2009 shows it with a sign saying "Coins not accepted," indicating that it was out of service. In fact BT allegedly had every intention of removing it, until someone argued for it being retained, saying that with such poor mobile signal in this area, an active phone box was actually pretty vital in an emergency. The phone box was subsequently restored.

 

The same can't be said for the poor chapel. Seriously, how have I managed to find more of a story for a damn phone box than I have for an entire chapel?

But that's just how it is sometimes. Sometimes things don't need an epic tale attached. Sometimes a chapel is just a chapel. But that doesn't mean it's not important. I always try to put myself into the shoes of the people who a place mattered to. In spite of my own feelings on religion, this chapel was important to someone once. A hundred years ago there were people who looked forward to coming here as part of their weekly routine. And with these small rural communities being so tight knit, there was probably a vicar who enjoyed catching up with his congregation too. 

That's all I've got for today. I'm sticking on this local blog for a little while longer. My next post will be a cottage and then another chapel. In the meantime, to make sure you don't miss an update, follow me on Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. 

They're all shit, but the other option is to just regularly check back and hope I'm productive. 

Thanks for reading!

The Toll House

Today's post is a little one, but it's a bit nostalgic to me. It's a former toll house on the outskirts of Oswestry, and it's been derelict for decades. 

According to old maps from the 1890s it was actually part of a hamlet once, surrounded by fields until Oswestry expanded into it.

I grew up in Oswestry. I was one of those kids with long hair and a band t-shirt, inadvertently putting the fear of Satan into the towns pensioners just by existing and going outdoors. Those were great times!

And as an innocent, adorable sixteen year old, this toll house was actually the first abandoned place I ever checked out, although we were just bored kids checking out something spooky. At the time, I had no plans on moving to Shrewsbury in my 20s and making urbex a regular thing. I didn't even know what urbex was. 

The building was empty, save for a pile of mail on the floor and a load of spiders, so it came as a bit of a surprise when I returned here many years later, and found it fully furnished, but still abandoned. What's going on here?

Slipping inside brings us to what was once a tiny kitchen, but is now just full of clutter. There's a small sofa here, and there's an axe sitting on it quite ominously.

So it turns out that a couple, Christopher and Juliet, came to live here in the years since I left Oswestry. Christopher was 45 and Juliet was 50. People who knew them said that they were lovely people, and the ultimate soul mates, having been together for about twenty years. That's a hell of a long time. I get sick of someone after twenty minutes!

 

Christopher and Juliet were apparently homeless, having been evicted from their home allegedly for under-occupying it. But I want to make it clear that this is hearsay. My source claims that they had more bedrooms than they needed, and the council presumably wanted to give the property to a larger family.

But that could all be bullshit. I've learned from past experiences that I can't say "allegedly" enough. I've learned that from blogs where, if I took a shot for every time I said it, I'd be on dialysis. So it's important to repeat that this information is unverified. 

 

But regardless of how it came to be, Christopher and Juliet ended up here, where they kept dogs and sold timber. That explains the axe.

There's a very grubby-looking bed.

 

So initially back in my teenage years, I explored this place with my friend Will, and later some guy called Josh who ended up part of our posse somehow. We were originally too afraid to go upstairs. Can you believe that? Past Me was a wuss. But Josh and I went upstairs on our later visit. We'll get to that...

Will and I originally found our way around the house via candle light. You know, as good goths do. No torches for the flamboyantly morbid. And it was right in this corner, where the table and chair now sits under clutter, that I ended up setting my hair on fire when I leaned forward to look at something. I forget what I was looking at. Such things don't stick to the memory when ones head goes up in flames. 

Now there's just loads of abandoned possessions left behind.

The story of the house took a rather tragic turn in 2017. Plans were apparently underway to get Christopher and Juliet some social housing property, so that they'd no longer be forced to live in this derelict shell that didn't even have running water. But sadly they were found to have passed away. After an investigation it was concluded that they had died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty generator, but opiate intoxication was also said to be a contributing factor, presumably because of how it can affect the breathing. The toxicology report found cocaine, heroin and methadone in their systems. 

But, I am not here to judge. Two human beings dying in such a way is still tragic. I don't know the circumstances of their lives that led them to this lifestyle, but I do know that when I was homeless, I was helped back onto my feet by a support program that was axed when the Tories came in to power. And I try to keep politics out of the blog, but this is factually what happened. Now I'm a contributing member to society and a healthcare worker, but if my stint as a homeless person had been a little later, I could well be in a similar situation to Christopher and Juliet today. It's a scary thought, but it reinforces in me the firm belief that we should at least provide people with decent support to improve their lives. If we don't, then we doom them to failure. And it's all too common that people judge and condemn people for their situations, while simultaneously not offering any decent support. We're all just doing what we can with the hand that we've been dealt.

Here are the stairs. Well, what's left of them anyway. When I came here all those years ago, there was a complete staircase, but the bottom steps have since fallen away and been replaced by a chair.

At the very top of the stairs is a bathroom. But I don't remember the door being like this, with the crescent moons. It's possible that Christopher and Juliet had the door fitted to give the place some personal flavour, but that seems doubtful. Look at the handle. This thing is ancient. I assume that in my childhood it was just a feature that I missed.

Similarly I don't remember the bathroom being blue. But I do remember there being a bath in here. What happened to that?

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

The upper floors gave me a very uneasy feeling, but that could just be my imagination. Of course it goes without saying that it's incredibly unsafe up here. There's some clutter, but it feels more like this was used for storage more than anything.

This thing pulling the door shut is relatively new.

With the windows almost completely missing, the mass of ivy that covers the house is reaching in.

 There's another room at the back of the upper floor that I've not been in before. When I did come here as a teenager, I ventured upstairs with my friend Josh. But he went through the doorway up ahead and started shouting gibberish and ordered me to leave. He said I was in danger from evil spirits or something. I thought maybe he was just a bit of a daft cunt, but he was into that sort of thing. 

He later said that he'd spent years in the spirit world, where time works differently, and claimed that he'd even fathered a child there.

I haven't heard from him in years. Hopefully he got help. 

I'm actually really open to the supernatural, but it's a lot like a conspiracy theory. They start out making a few good points. Someone says something like "These moon landing photos seem a bit dodgy, and I think they may be faked. Perhaps NASA faked the landing in order to 1up the Russians during the Cold War." 

And I can buy that. That sounds plausible and realistic, and perhaps worth looking into. Then all of a sudden there's a video trying to prove that there's a moon base up there, and that Hitler is there, or that the moon is a hologram or something, and like that you've lost me. 

The supernatural is similar. I could really get into it. And then people like Josh come along, talking about making ghost babies with ectoplasm sperm, and it just switches me off.

Well the back room doesn't have anything to see, apart from some wonderful decay. No evil spirits tried to possess me. I wasn't taken to the Black Lodge and replaced with a buff doppelganger. It's just a room.

So in conclusion, I was quite saddened to hear the story of Christopher and Juliet, and my condolences go out to their family and other loved ones.

If anything can be learned from this, it's that support for the homeless needs improving. Nobody should have to live in a place like this, where one fart could bring the roof down.

 

On a personal note, it sure was strange revisiting this place and finding that it had things in it. That caught me completely by surprise.

In fact it was strange just revisiting Oswestry. I do miss it sometimes, but all the people and things that made it home have moved on. I can return to Oswestry, but "My" Oswestry isn't there anymore, if that makes sense.

But that's all I've got. I've been neglecting this blog for my international one for some time, but I'm going to stick around here for a bit. I'm sure it will annoy all the right people. I have a blog about a chapel coming up next. In the meantime, the best way to get updates on this blog is to follow me on social media, so be sure to follow me on Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. They're algorithmic hellscapes, so you might not see my posts at all. Facebook has recently cut my reach, and is trying to sell it back to me. But following my social media is the best way for people to stay updated.

 

Thanks for reading!