Stoke Heath barracks

 

Hello! I'm back on the local blog, mooching around yet another abandoned military thingie. The last military site I visited had a couple of dead horses, so I was a little apprehensive but simultaneously rather doubtful that I'd find something quite so bonkers twice in a row. Surely, to quote my dating profile, the weirdest thing anyone will find here is me.

 

This place is a pretty biggish cluster of old military buildings sticking out of a sea of nettles and brambles. From what I can gather, it was known in the post-war era as Stoke Heath, but was originally part of RAF Tern Hill, a nearby airfield that dates all the way back to 1916, when the first world war was in full swing, people were getting massacred, the British military medical guys had carried out the worlds first successful blood transfusion, and Germany had to cancel the summer Olympics. What a time to be alive.

Various aircraft squadrons have been stationed at Tern Hill, but it almost wasn't the case. There was a huge fire in 1919 that destroyed a hangar and a few other important buildings, at which point the powers-that-be concluded that they didn't really need this place anyway. The Great War was over, after all. The land was sold in 1922, and the surviving buildings were turned into race horse stables.

 

But then that pesky Hitler fellow came to power, and they quickly u-turned on that decision. In 1935 the land was requisitioned in an act of foresight that proved pretty wise on the grand scheme of things. It did take a while to rebuild the airfield though, because the land had been infested with Rabbits. But the military went Watership Down on their fluffy asses, and soon RAF Tern Hill was back in the game.

In the years building up to the war, Tern Hill was primarily used for aircraft storage and maintenance, but as of 1939 it became a fighter airfield, populated by Spitfires and Hurricanes. During the Battle of Britain it served as a relief landing ground, and became a temporary base for the old Night Fighters who were protecting Liverpool and Manchester from the Luftwaffe. Following the war, it became a training school, and around 1949 Stoke Heath seems to have began being referred to as a separate camp despite its proximity to the main airfield.

 

This area appears to be an old mess hall, with the remnants of the kitchens serving hatches still present. 

 

 

It's kinda cool, imagining this place full of tables and military folk enjoying their lunch and socialising. It would have been full of conversation and banter. None of them would ever imagine that someday it would look like this, and that any old wazzock could just wander around it.

 

 

Behind the hatches, the kitchen area has seen better days. 

 

 

Here's a cool vintage light switch.

 

 

And there's a fireplace here too.

 

Stoke Heath was apparently one of Tern Hills aircraft dispersals. That is, they parked planes here. When it was redesignated Stoke Heath, it was became an RAF maintenance unit. They had an entire salvage crew who would drive out to crash sites and cart the remains back here to see what could be put to use. One first hand account tells of how they would take bits from three or four wrecked Avro Lancasters and build a whole fully functioning new one. 

Stoke Heath also trained future pilots on old noisy-as-fuck American Harvard aircraft, at least until the end of the 1950s.

But as far as those stationed here were concerned, Stoke Heath was a bit dull. The area wasn't as built up back then, and it was all mostly farmland. A few firsthand accounts tell of how they felt like they might as well be overseas, given how remote they were. A few actually did apply to be sent overseas, but they were denied. They belonged to Stoke Heath now.

 

 

And it's not so bad. It sure looks like it gets chilly in the Winter, but it's got a cool vibe to it. And as far as urbex goes, it's an absolute delight. Do you see any vandalism? Any graffiti? Any urbex stickers advertising their social media just in case I want to see the exact same place I've just been to but in grainy footage and with chavvy voice-over? 

Nope. All of this decay is purely natural, and I fucking love it.

 

 

But the Stoke Heath camp was apparently quite spread out. There were four worksites and four domestic sites. What we see here is just the last vestiges of an absolute countryside clutter bonanza. The rest have all been destroyed or repurposed. The nearby prison, also named Stoke Heath, was part of it, while the farm nearest to this camp was said to be the base infirmary. I think the nearby animal food shop, Grove Feeds, was part of the camp too. It looks suspiciously militaristic for an animal eatery.

So with everything being rather scattered, everyone posted to Stoke Heath was issued a bicycle, except for the Commanding Officer who got to have a car. They had some chap in Market Drayton, the mysterious Mr Davies, in charge of bike maintenance. I'm not sure if he was a military guy or just some random man with a bike shop who lucked out on setting up a business near an airfield. Either way, he was kept busy.

And from what I've read, the entire area was covered in workshops as far as the eye could see. There were radars, hangars, admin blocks, an airfield, a large camp cinema, a women's camp for the WAAF, messes, dining areas and a small jail for anyone who needed it. It was basically a little self-contained community.

 

 

Check this out. 

 

 

Hidden amongst the foliage, I spy a toilet. Evidently this was the toilet block.

 

 

And here's a urinal. Now the lads can help water the plants when they somehow fail to aim despite having had their penises for their entire lives. I swear some of you just stand there and helicopter.

 

This is still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. 

 

So despite the camps being spread out and connected by a merry myriad of country lanes, it was common practice for those working in the admin block or radar workshops to ride their bikes cross country, with their routes planned out with planks of wood across any rivers that happened to be in the way. It's a level of dedication to a short cut that I just love. The work hours were 8am to 5am on a week day, and 8am to 1pm on a Saturday. They didn't have a curfew as long as they made it to work in the morning, and being in rural Shropshire there wasn't much going on that kept them out late.

Having said that, the WAAF did host dances in their mess hall, and they'd send out buses to pick up ladies from the nearby towns. The men at Stoke Heath nicknamed the buses "Passion Wagons," giving us a pretty clear indicator of what they expected from any interaction with the local girls. The gene pool of Market Drayton got a little more diversity. Let's be honest, it kinda needs it.

 

 

Behind the mess hall, there's a bit of a maze of store rooms. It's all long been stripped out.

 

 

All of these little rooms have the remnants of shelves and plenty of intrusive nature. 

 

 

I suppose this room may have once housed a generator or something maybe. 

 

 

This door does have some old military signage. That's pretty cool. 

 

 

And then there's this big spacious room. The steps leading down into it are so overgrown I didn't even see them from the outside. I had to hop in from that opening by the tyre over there. 

 

 

With this big room being somewhat semi-subterranean, I did wonder about its usage. We have the stairs coming down into it, but also a huge vertical shaft over there with sunlight coming in. I wonder what they could have stored here that they couldn't just have access to via big ground level doorways.

 

 

All the old pipes are still on the walls.  

 

And here we have the doorway leading to the steps up to a big mess of brambles. Not wanting to get stung for no reason, I left the way I came in. 

 

 

But what's this sexy piece of oceanic traversal?

It's only a fucking boat! 

 

 

I kinda like boats. I don't know why. The floor is a bit broken on this one, making it probably not the smartest choice of vessel if one wishes to cross any body of water, unless you plan on throwing it horizontally across a large puddle and using it as a footbridge. It seems to have been abandoned down here.

 

 

Moving on from the larger "community" buildings, Stoke Heath has a huge collection of very samey residential cabins, all linked by a little road. It's weird to think that people actually lived in these.

 

 

If you look closely, each building has a faded stenciled letter, which seems to be an official military designation.

 

 

I didn't look in all of them. Mainly because it was actually impossible to get to half of them without fighting through a forest of prickly things. In spite of the situations I so often find myself in, being stabbed by plants is actually one of my least favourite things. Nevertheless I got in enough of these cabins to know that it would all get pretty repetitive.

 

 

Each cabin has a central corridor which splits off into various rooms. 

 

 

I assume the size of the accommodation would vary depending on rank.

 

 

The corners of each room have these little platforms beneath a ceiling pipe. I assume there would have been paraffin heaters here back when the cabins were occupied. 

 

As well as a wide range of identical smaller cabins, there's also a wide range of identical wider buildings, which get incessantly samey and repetitive, but I can't help but stop to photograph. 

This is the Wonder Wall of Urbex. Sure, it's basic and overplayed, but I'm still gonna sing along.

 

 

Allegedly one of these more spacious buildings was converted into an indoor tennis court by a flight sergeant at some point prior to 1951, but obviously with these buildings long abandoned and stripped out, it's impossible to tell which cabin this was.

 

 Meanwhile, back outdoors, what's this?

 

 

If you've been here and completely overlooked this bush gash, I understand. I nearly missed it too! But it is in fact the entrance to an air raid shelter.

 

 Check it out! This is so cool! 

Back to the surface...

 

 

This building has no roof left, and nature has totally claimed it. On its own it wouldn't get my attention but here it breaks up the monotony a little bit.

 

 

It still has a few small rooms. 

 

 

This room has a central wall, and it looks like something was once against it, as well as the wall behind it. It has a bit of an office vibe. I can totally see people sat at desks here.

 

 

This window is still on its hinges, still retaining its latch. It's still functional despite being a wreck.

Very relatable. And just to give a sense of scale of how spread out the area is, the mess hall is all the way over there. 

 

There's a water tank up in this tower. There's no way up to it now but on a closer look, there is the remnant of a latch on the wall, which means there was probably a wooden door and steps at some point. 

 

 

There's a load of hay in here which would suggest some sort of agricultural repurposing at some point. But what''s cool is the Military designation letter G still painted on the wall.

 

 

Inside is a copy of Farmers Weekly from 1971. 

 

 

And here's a copy of the Shropshire Star from 1974. Let's see what marvelous insight into the past this rag can offer us.

Hmm... "Eye witnesses said that Israeli planes buzzed Palestinian refugee camps but did not resume yesterdays wide ranging air strikes."

Wow, the human race has grown so much!

 

 

Some of the buildings were clearly designed to house vehicles. 

 

 

Rooms like this are prevalent at military sites, featureless, windowless, and with doors at each end. I have no idea what purpose they serve. Perhaps they had dirt pushed up against the walls to make them function as shelters.

 

 

There are some little ceiling stalactites which are pretty cool. 

 

 

In 2008, long after the Stoke Heath camp closed, it was subject to some mild controversy when traces of trichloroethylene was found in the local water. It's an industrial solvent used for cleaning. It used to be a surgical anaesthetic and a pet food additive until it was linked with kidney cancer and banned in 1977, but back when Stoke Heath was active, it was all the rage. It seems that RAF activities here had contaminated the local water. 

Whoops.

 

 

Regarding the surviving parts of RAF Tern Hill, it does pop up every now and again because of some kind of controversy. The most notable of these was in 1989 when it was attacked by the IRA. The incident happened at 3am when Lance Corporal Alan Norris noticed two suspicious people, who fled. They dropped a bag containing a bomb, but this was in fact the third they had brought along. The other two had already been planted around the accommodation barracks. Luckily Norris alerted everyone and the building was evacuated before the bombs exploded. The two IRA bombers fled in a stolen Ford Montego.  

I actually did a blog about the nearby derelict building that they used as a HQ while planning the attack, all the way back in 2015, nearly nine years ago. Now that makes me feel old. Maybe I should pack it all in and get a real job already.

 

 

 

In the present day, most of RAF Tern Hill is still in use, although the airfield itself is primarily used as a training landing ground by RAF Shawbury, and the barracks itself is called The Clive Barracks, named after that guy whose statue is in Shrewsbury Square. I actually had no idea who he was until 2020, just like hundreds of other people who walked right past him every single day.

But in the height of 2020, a lot of people suddenly realised that they had no hobbies or personality and consequently became a bunch of keyboard warriors, competing for virtue points. Bristol had made headlines by throwing a racist statue into the sea, and people in Shrewsbury realised that they also had a racist statue and decided to hop on that bandwagon. Also around that time a pensioner spread a rumour that I was, with the help of the DJ from Alberts Shed, secretly running China's Yulin festival. More bizarrely, a load of old people on the internet believed him.

2020 was a crazy year.

But I digress. Circling back to Clive, his statue became a subject of "debate" between two warring camps who really just needed a hobby and a blow job.

Young people said the statue should come down. Old people said that removing it would be erasing history. Most people didn't know who Clive even was, but if he was from the 1700s then of course he was racist. So were half the pensioners barking at me for running the Yulin festival. Personally I was in favour of keeping the statue but having an information board explaining the history and why it was controversial. In the end, that's exactly what happened, but oddly the boomers of Facebook thought that this information board explaining the history was also erasing the history. The lesson is you can't win with grumpy people on the internet, and now that the lockdowns are over and people are less bored, Clive's statue is back to being ignored again.

 

 

Bizarrely, it's the cabins at the back of the complex that seem to have had the most recent use. This one is absolutely full of clutter, and some sort of wooden contraption.

 

 

Seriously, what is this?

 

 

It kinda looks like someone has been squatting in here.

 

 

But the wooden contraption crosses the entire width of the cabin, cutting off this chunk of it, which makes it functionally problematic. Obviously it's all still accessible, but who wants to climb over something every time they want to get to the rest of a room? It's doable but a bit of a faff.

 

 

I do wonder how old all this stuff is, and if any of it was actually used by the military during the time that the Stoke Heath camp was being used. 

 

 

There have been a few more recent controversies at the Clive Barracks. There was a UFO sighting in 2008, where The Sun newspaper released some grainy footage of the fucking moon, and a murder in 2014, when 32 year-old Corporal Geoffrey McNeill was attacked by another military bloke, Mr Lance Corporal Richard Farrell. Farrell had apparently been previously floored by McNeill for being a gobby twat and had later sought out McNeill in his own quarters for a little revenge murder. 

Following Farrell's arrest the other soldiers smashed his car. Fully fucking deserved.

 

More recently there's been some controversy about the living conditions at the Clive Barracks, with some people even living in shipping containers. The MOD has announced that it will all close down and get sold at some point. But they change the closing date all the time. First they said it was 2022, and then they changed it to 2025. Currently I think it's said to be 2029. If I'm still alive by then, maybe it will join Stoke Heath on this blog. Who knows?

 

 

The final cabin has had some more recent modifications, with these block walls being installed. It looks like it may have been used to keep animals, but the building is still so sufficiently decayed that I doubt it was a recent alteration. 

 

 

There's no date on this newspaper, but it's got an interview with the novelist Berta Ruck, claiming that she has just turned 94. That dates the paper at 1972. 

 

 

And of course there's a toilet. The best part of any abandoned place.

 

 

That's pretty much all I've got. But I absolutely love this place. From an urbex perspective, it's a bloody rarity to see places so lacking in vandalism. The decay is entirely natural, with every building being slowly taken over by nature. It's lovely to see. There's not a single badly drawn penis or star of David intended to be a pentagram anywhere in this entire place. 

Unfortunately it's also pretty bleak and repetitive so absolutely not everyone's cup of tea. Personally I couldn't get enough.

As of 2019 there were plans to turn this entire area into 38 homes, although the pandemic probably delayed things somewhat. Nevertheless, I'm glad I got to document this place when I did. It's been on my radar for years, but I never got around to doing it. Now I'm doing this whole "Loose End Season" thing because I have too many loose ends, and I have to admit I would have been sad if I had left this place get destroyed without documenting it first. 

My next blogs will be an abandoned house in Shropshire with some surprising history, and then a Greek villa in... Greece, funnily enough. That's right, I'm continuing my dream of being a global bad example to others.

In the meantime, I hate social media but unfortunately it's the best way for you to see updates about my blog. Hooray. So if you like my stuff, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Vero, Twatter, Reddit and... I think that's it actually. 

Thanks for reading!

Rabbit shoot

Sometimes I'll do something a little different, and photograph actual humans, with a pulse and everything. I mean, they are literally everywhere. I might as well do something with them, right? 

So I decided to do a photoshoot with my good friend Alice, which makes it more of a collaboration, really. Alice does surreal photographs wearing this creepy rabbit mask, and I do the urban exploring. Let's combine the two into some kind of bonkers rooftop bonanza!

I'm not entirely sure if there's any "lore" to Alice's rabbit photo project, but I sort of envision it as a type of cryptid or SCP. The rabbit is a creature that people might see out of the corner of their eye. Blink and the rabbit is gone.

Obviously, in the real world it's just Alice in a mask, but it's fun to play with concepts.

 

 

 

 

And then, Alice took a photo of me wearing the rabbit head, and looking somewhat more sinister. I sort of look like an extra from that horror-themed Winnie the Pooh movie.

 

 

And just to wrap it all up, I'll include a few that I took without the mask.

 

 

Creativity and posing aside, sometimes it's good to go candid, and just photograph people enjoying the fuck out of life. 

 

 

For me, rooftopping also evokes a sort of "separate world" vibe, not so much in the literal sense, but more in line with the China Mieville novel, "the city and the city," where two distinct cities inhabit the same geographical space, but are depicted as separate based on the perception of the inhabitants. The rooftopper sees a succession of secret worlds, mere inches away from the public and their version of the town, completely oblivious that rooftoppers exist.

 

But it's a good hobby that costs nothing, harms nobody, brings about a great feeling of escapism, and combines an appreciation of the urban landscape with creative problem solving. It's also really therapeutic if you have a lot of stress, and just need to direct that energy somewhere. Some folks hit the gym. I hit the rooftops. I should probably see a therapist, but this is way more fun.

 

So my next blog will be a return to normality as I talk about an abandoned military thing with a dead horse inside for some reason. I think the one after that is a military thing too, but that one has a boat. It's going to be awesome!

If you want to see more of Alice and her lovably creepy rodent head, be sure to follow the Instagram where she posts those photos. If you want to stay up to date with my ridiculous shittery, give my social media thingies a follow. I'm active on Instagram, although with my reach awfully reduced, you'd never think that. I'm also active on Facebook, a happy part of that 15% that isn't a grumpy boomer, and you can find me on Vero, Reddit, Twitter and Threads for some reason.

Thanks for reading!

Cressage Pillboxes

 

I'm a little late for remembrance day, because I'm disorganised, but I'm continuing Loose-End Season with a war-related blog, having a random mooch over to Cressage to photograph the Pillboxes there. There are two hexagonal Pillboxes designed to defend the nearby bridge over the river Severn. Allegedly there are still a couple of machine gun placements hidden around there too, and I was going to postpone this blog until I could go back to find them.

But this entire area is rather prone to flooding and with the recent rainfall, the fields of Cressage could probably be described as an insufferable slimy mess (to quote my dating profile) so I could be waiting a while. Let's cover the pillboxes anyway.

 

 

With the outbreak of the second world war, there was a very real fear that a German invasion of the UK was imminent, and consequently the Brits introduced a plethora of precautions (Plethautions, anyone? No?)

 

Pillboxes were defensive structures that enabled someone to shoot at an approaching invader from relative safety. I imagine it would take a very skilled marksman to fire a bullet from a distance through a pillbox window and land a killing blow, given that they'd be trying to dodge bullets themselves. 

In regards to the Cressage pillbox, it's important to understand that canals and rivers also provided a natural defensive barrier, and with the River Severn winding mostly southward, it formed a stop line that could halt an enemy's advance, so naturally the powers-that-be wanted to guard it. It had the added importance of being in close proximity to Pitchford, where the Royal Family planned on relocating to if things got hairy.

 

The two pillboxes were built in 1940 and even though they sit alone today, the entire area would have had a lot more going for it. I have seen plans from the time, albeit I've seen photos of photos, so they weren't very clear, but they showed that the area was littered with road blocks, coiled barbed wire barriers and slit trenches. The bridge probably would have been rigged to blow up, too.

 

 

Slipping inside, we can see that there's really not much going on here. The Pillboxes are hexagonal, with the doors at the rear, and the windows at the front. It's all decoratively bleak, but then what were we expecting? I'm quite surprised that there's no graffiti.

 

 

Of course, we all know that in the event of German invasion, exactly how it would have played out is entirely hypothetical. With the invasion likely approaching from the South East, would the Severn in Shropshire been more of a retreating line of defence? Of course, this being the internet there's bound to be someone writing about how they alone know exactly what would have happened and that everyone else is wrong because they saw a video on Youtube about it, but the honest truth is, nobody knows, and speculative history is a playground for the imagination.

 

Hitler had his beady eye on Bridgnorth, wanting to make a base there. Whereas Churchill had Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire as a planned place to retreat to. So the West Midlands absolutely could have become quite a pivotal place. Alternative history is something I'm quite fond of pondering. The Battle of Britain was a monumentally crucial time in British history and it's interesting to think that things could have gone very differently. 

 

 

Here's the second pillbox, completely identical in design, but in a different field.

 

 

And of course, the interior is delightfully samey too, but I had to check it out anyway for the sake of completion.

 

 

This one has fuck loads of snails living in it. 

 

There's a birds nest too! 

But aside from that, I might as well have shown you the same building twice.

 

But the thing is, these pillboxes were obsolete before the war was even over. They'd never been put to the test and as the war chugged on, it became apparent that they never would be. As the invasion of Britain became less and less likely, these things were just left here to be taken back by nature.

I find war ruins particularly eerie given that in maybe thirty years there won't be anyone alive who remembers the world wars at all, but these little structural scars will outlive us. The Cressage Pillboxes are still there for anyone who fancies a quick mooch. They aren't going anywhere, except periodically underwater during flood season.

That's all I've got this time, but soon I'll be posting a Welsh thing on my travel blog, and then I'll be posting a rooftop photoshoot blog, because fuck it, I haven't done one in ages. 

In the meantime, be sure to follow my social media thingies to minimise your chances of missing a blog update. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook, Vero and sometimes Reddit. I also have a Twitter and a Threads account, but sometimes I forget about them, but you can follow me there for those rare moments where my bliss is interrupted by me remembering that they exist.

Thanks for reading!

Indian Kiosk

One thing that caught my attention a while back was this totally out-of-place Indian building just sat casually minding its own business in a Shropshire field, totally out of the public gaze. And anyone who has followed this blog will know that I will always prioritise documenting the quirky stuff, even if it is something so tiny that I can stand right in the middle and touch four surfaces at the same time with my feet, outstretched hands, and scalp. I absolutely love that these eccentric hidden gems just exist, waiting to be found and enjoyed, even though they seemingly serve no purpose whatsoever beyond that of a field ornament. 

But what the fuck is this thing and why is it here?

 

 

The structure, despite it's rural setting, is in close-ish proximity to a stately home that was built in 1714 for a chap called Whitmore Acton, of the Acton Baronetcy whose name pops up all over Shropshire. Pretty much every generation has had some Acton in Parliament, and like any rich family, it's not without its scandal. It seems that for all his mansion-building and parliament-sitting, Whitmore Actons proudest achievement was keeping a married woman as a mistress while he was still in college. 

And then we have his descendants, Edward Acton who went to France and fell in love with a French girl. The girls mother decided to protect her from this creepy older man by sending her off to become a nun, but Edward was so fixated that he became a doctor, and then became chief medical advisor to all of the local convents just so that he could hunt her down. And then the sixth Baron, John Acton, married his thirteen-year-old niece when he was 64. So there you go. Would it be a real story about a rich family if there was no incest and noncery?

But the Actons didn't build this Indian thingie. While Whitmore did want to live in the nearby mansion with his widowed Aunt Hester, he instead set his sights on a house in Bridgnorth and subsequently abandoned this area, although it is believed that his own widow would live there following his death in 1732, up until her own death in 1759. The 1700s were when follies started becoming popular, and utterly bonkers garden features were all the rage, so I thought the Indian hut would be part of the estate then, but it turns out it wasn't.

 

 

Here's another angle for photo-padding. This one captures its delightfully silly sloped roof, which indicates a sort of not-too-bothered-about-perfectionism attitude. It also has a rear window, which is odd, because if we peek through the door we can see that it is completely obstructed by this water tank. 

 

 

I found out that a chap called Kennedy moved into the mansion in the late 1960s, allegedly finding it derelict and full of livestock. As such his new home was a work in progress that he decided to recreate in a marvelously eccentric way. The Indian structure was built in the 1970s to cover up this water tank. But there's a bit more to the story than him simply moving here and deciding to build something wacky to hide something ugly. 

See, down around Wolverhampton somewhere was another stately home, Tettenhall Wood Hall, built around 1833 for Theodosia Hinkes, who inherited that estate and consequently had a grand, castellated monstrosity built to the designs of a chap called Thomas Rickman, an architect who was an expert in Gothic architecture. That entire estate was decorated with fantastic architectural features and stained glass windows, but by the mid 20th Century some developer wankers had decided that they wanted to rip it all down in exchange for a bunch of dull, soulless houses. 

The occupant at the time, Ethel Hickman, made a deal that they could demolish the house six months after she passed away. To her credit, she did drag it out as long as she could, making it to 103 before passing away in 1969, whereupon her mansion was demolished.

But first, huge chunks of it were auctioned off. Numerous people swooped in to save the stained glass windows, but other parts of the structure were popular too. Kennedy showed on multiple occasions with a crowbar and a trailer, and just took what he could. 

It seems that the Indian shack was part of that whole rescue mission, and even though I can't find any photo evidence of that, not far away from the Indian structure is this curiously pointless monument.

 

And when I say "Pointless," I mean it in the sense that monuments are typically erected to commemorate something, whereas this one isn't. Its just there, sticking out of the ground collecting bird droppings. But that wasn't always the case. Prior to it being bundled into a trailer and taken to Shropshire, this was a fountain at Tettenhall Wood House, and I've managed to find an old photo of it.

 

(Image not mine, obviously)

Many other eccentric structures now decorate the former not-a-home of Whitmore Acton, and it's said that they're made almost entirely out of bits pilfered from Tettenhall prior to its demolition. Some of these can actually be seen from the road. He built a little summer house in the garden, and a castellated tractor shed. 

And why the fuck not? He sounds like a brilliant guy, and I'm all for saving cool stuff if it's only going to get destroyed. 

But as if decorating his land with bonkers buildings isn't eccentric enough, Kennedy was best known for constructing a ginormous medieval trebuchet which he used primarily to hurl cars across his fields, partly for an event to raise money for a new organ at the local church, but mostly for fun, let's be honest. He could easily have got them a new organ with the money that he spent building the trebuchet, but it's way more fun this way. 

Here's a video of it.

(Footage not mine, obviously)

But unfortunately in 2001 Kennedy did come under fire from the RSPCA when it came to light that he was also throwing dead cows and dead horses, which seems a little outside of their sphere of dominion. I mean, the animals are already dead. There's plenty of other things that need their attention. I think they said it was symbolic of treating animals as disposable playthings, or something, so I do kinda see their point. 

To his credit they did use trebuchets to weaponise dead livestock in the medieval times, so he clearly just wanted to replicate the era authentically. But on the subject, Kennedy said "Not all of them burst on impact but when they do, the local kids love paddling in the guts," which is just such an entertaining response.

 

It is said that the trebuchet rotted and had to be disposed of back in 2006, so sadly there are no more displays of cars being hurled across vast empty fields. Kennedy himself seems to have retired to smaller digs, leaving the estate to his children, but the quirky architecture remains.

 

The folly in their garden is incorporated into the wall, so it can be glimpsed from the outside. And then just up from that there's this castellated tractor shed.

And really, I'm just glad that this stuff exists. Every time someone quirky and creative unleashes something bonkers or unconventional into the world, the world gets slightly less shit. And from a heritage perspective, all of this is supposedly rescued from a fantastic mansion that no longer exists. It would have all been destroyed in 1969 if it hadn't been rescued. Kennedy can't take the credit for rescuing all of it, because he wasn't the only person there with itchy fingers, but he has definitely made a little far-flung corner of Shropshire unique.

 

My next blogs will be carrying on Loose-End Season with some pillboxes, so that we can cover some military epicness, and then I'm doing something small and Welsh on my travel blog. 

In the meantime, the best way to get blog updates is by following my social media. I'm active on Instagram, Vero, Facebook, and Reddit. I also have Threads and Twitter, but I forget about those all the time.

Thanks for reading!