Todays location is one that I decided to travel out to on my birthday. I struggle with birthdays, largely due to some of the more traumatic elements of my childhood, so I tend to just find some way to distract myself, and this normally involves picking a far away chunk of my to-do list, hopping on a train and going adventuring!
A last minute addition to this adventure was a small blonde human named Alice, who came into my life via Instagram and proceeded to just be good at everything. Photography, kickboxing, scrambling around abandoned things. It was like the Milky Bar kid ripped off that hat to unleash bundles of long hair, and said "Surprise, I was a woman all along!"
Alice asked if she could come on an adventure with me, and I told her that I was getting a train to parts unknown ridiculously early on the morning of my latest lap around a giant nuclear fireball on big a ball of dirt. Usually when people message me to come along on adventures, such things put them off, along with every other suggestion that actual effort is involved, and that I don't just tap my dainty feet and say "There's no place like someone elses home." Alice surprised me by being totally fine with a ridiculously early start and possibly some long countryside strolling, at which point I thought "Shit, she's serious," and decided to meet her before the big day, just to make sure I wasn't about to have a long train journey with a massive cunt.
And good news! We got along! So off we trotted to this magical place, and had a great day!
Ooooh, check out the top of that window frame halfway up the square tower. It's got a great big crack in it. That towers a couple of gloomy days away from a complete breakdown.
Great! That means we have something in common! In we go!
It's clearly designed to look medieval but it actually dates back to the Victorian era. However theres been a house on this site since the 1500s. The original building was first occupied by a family whose lineage came to an end in 1668, whereupon the land was eventually obtained by a vicar named Richard. Richard had a son, named David, and he gained a hyphenated surname purely because it was one of the conditions required to inherit everything on his mothers side of the family. But for his efforts to procure a lot of assets, he failed to successfully shoot his DNA into another human. As such when he died in 1819, it was his nephew Owen who inherited everything, but on the condition that he too adopted the hyphenated surname.
Owens son then inherited the property, and as a wealthy politician, he wanted a house that reflected his status. He had the original building torn down in 1866 so that he could replace it with this fantastic DisneyLand-On-Drugs bonanza. The construction cost £70,000, which is the equivalent of about £3 million today, and it was finally completed in 1876. Its quirky design even earned it a feature in an 1877 issue of "The Builder" magazine, but for all its initial popularity and media hype, history would be unkind.
Check out the floor tiles in the entrance! It's a nice little indicator of what this place was once like.
The owner died in 1920, although some sources say 1925. His widow remained here until her own death in 1928. Their only son had died at the age of eight, meaning that all of the property fell into the hands of their daughter. She had no use for the house, so she rented it out to the local clergy and went to live somewhere far, far away.
From then on, stories of the buildings history sometimes gets contradictory. It was apparently a retirement home for the clergy first. That's fairly indisputable. But then some say that during World War 2 it served as a hospital for soldiers, while others say that Red Cross used it as a childrens hospital and evacuation centre. These arent necessarily contradictory, given that the war was six years long, and changes could easily occur in that time.
In 1959 the estate was broken up and the house sold. Some secondary sources say that it was used as an orphanage, while others say that it retained use as a hospital long into the 1960s. But one testimonial comes from a chap who claims to have been born here in 1962, due to his mother having mental illnesses and seeking help from the clergy during her pregnancy.
In the late 1970s the place became a hotel, but in 1982 a fire broke out that reduced this once amazing building into the shell that it is today, although it was further helped along by an additional arson attack in 2014. As a testament to the buildings structural integrity, there was an incident in the 1970s where a hotel guest crashed a scrambler motorbike into a wall, hospitalising himself, wrecking his bike, but not even scratching the wall.
All these wooden beams stacked up in the hallway are the leftover supplies purchased by a bold, but ambitious squatter, who once took it upon himself to live here and gradually fix it up.
Personally looking at the damage I would say it's too much for one man, but I absolutely applaud him for trying. The landowner, who lives in Canada and seemingly doesn't give a shit, suddenly started giving a shit and returned to the UK to challenge the squatter in court and have them removed.
What a fool. You got someone fixing up your property and it's not costing you a penny! Now you've got a building that's still derelict, but now it's littered with construction supplies too. Bravo. Great plan.
The upper floor still has its radiators.
Here is the main hall, ruthlessly claimed back by nature, with the remains of a staircase stretching out along the wall in a feeble attempt to provide a service. Looking at it, this room likely didn't have a full ceiling, but rather a balcony landing that went around the walls and led to various hallways. I might be wrong. Either way, whatever form the upper floor was in, it isn't now.
I absolutely love that nature has claimed all this back over the last forty years.
Due to the building being destroyed by a fire, some parts of it are standing better than others, and it's pretty easy to see where these are. I do wonder what this place looked like in between fires. How much of this damage was the 1982 fire, and how much was more recent?
Looking directly up the tower, it's fairly obvious that I won't be getting up there. In fact it seems more likely that the tower will come down here...
In this portion of the building, the ground floor was actually collapsing, giving us access to what had once been the cellar. Naturally upon seeing this I trusted the ground floor to support my weight about as much as I'd trust the McCanns to babysit, so I wasn't particularly keen on that floor being above my head either, so while I did go down into the cellar, it was purely to climb back out on the other side of the hole, rather than to explore the parts that still had a ceiling.
The overgrowth often makes it particularly difficult to see where floorboard ends and hole begins, which is a bit of a hindrance when one really wants to put their feet in various places as they traverse this place.
Well, I made it to the other side. Now what?
Well this part of the hotel seems to be in better condition. I mean it has a ceiling, just about. There's no actual way to get up there though, which in spite of its dilapidated state, still disapoints me. There could still be furniture up there! If the fire took out the stairs, how would anyone clear the furniture out? I guess we won't know until a hotel bed comes crashing down onto some helpless trespasser.
There's a few foldable seats here, but it was what we found in the next room that really shocked me...
It's packed with old games! Slot machines, pool tables, pinball games. All vintage, from a 1980s hotel arcade, rotting away here.
Alice wasn't as keen on smashed games machines as I was, so she waited outside while I climbed all over them. Right at the back, it was possible to touch the ceiling. Alas, if only they'd all been stacked a little further to the left, I could have used these to climb through that hole and access the upper floor. Getting down would be easy... just gently tap my feet and let gravity do the rest.
These pool tables were actually stacked neatly in here, almost as if someone intended to store them, along with all the other games. But store them for what purpose? Were they stored here before the fire and then abandoned with the building or were they moved here after the fire? If they were moved here after the fire, why? Surely it would have been better to get a van and send them off to a less-crumbly storage space?
I do wonder, could any of these still be functional? Is the damage only superficial or are they beyond help?
Here at the far corner from the main entrance is perhaps the most structurally stable part of the entire building, and allegedly it's where the brave squatter lived when he decided that he would fix the place up. Whatever's here now is probably squatter paraphernalia, perhaps including this armchair. Given that this portion of the building has it's own stairs and bathrooms that seem separate from the rest, I think it may have been servants quarters back when this was a rich politicians country home.
Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
The stairs lead to mostly samey rooms, not really hallways.
However it is possible to get out onto what's left of the roof.
And from here its possible to see the mansion from the level of the upper floor. The wooden beams that the squatter intended to install are still stacked there on the floor.
This reminds me somewhat of Denbigh Mental Asylum, when we put planks across the floorless hallways to traverse the upper levels. Sadly so such opportunity exists here, and I do believe that this place is probably less stable than Denbigh asylum.
Theres a lot that has been moved out of the house and currently litters the courtyard and gardens, all remnants of the hotels former life, rotting away in the countryside.
But that seems to be all we've got today.
When I last checked, the property was on the market for a relatively measely £500,000, but while that seems like a terrific deal for a Victorian castelated mansion, the cost of restoration is probably astronomical. I suppose it's too much to hope that some eccentric billionaire scoops it up and gives it the love and effort that it's begging for. Sadly its more likely to end up as rubble. But life is often full of surprises so maybe there is hope for this place.
As for my glumness, that passed. Whatever works, right? We can't help feeling down over shit that happens, but we are responsible for how we deal with it, and going out to dilapidated Victorian castles with new friends seems to do the trick! Like Ouija LeMay says, it's easier to get cocaine than it is to get help with mental health. But instead of doing that, this blog is my line. Snifffffffffff!!!!!
Next blog I'm taking a look at an abandoned nursing home, and then I'm looking at an abandoned college building scheduled for demolition. In the meantime, share the blog, and make sure you dont miss updates by liking my Facebook, following my Instagram and following my Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
Another amazing building. Thanks lad.
ReplyDeleteWonderful explore and I lol'd at your comment about the McCanns.
ReplyDelete