Hello chums! Well isn't this depressing? Last week I was talking about the time I swam out to a capsized cruise ship and now we're back in cold soggy UK talking about some old abandoned house. It's a nice house but as far as content goes, it's a bit like the morning after a house party when the buzz is over and the place is a mess. I'm chasing the dragon now. I want that high back.
Abandoned houses do definitely have some mysterious gravitas, but they don't really inspire me. I understand the appeal, sure, but if you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know I like a place with a story. I want to lose myself down a rabbit hole of research and not come up until I find something juicy. All I can really do with a house is say "Oooh, that's good innit?"
But in a refreshing change of pace, this place does have a story. Down the rabbit hole we go.
In the urbex world, there are countless abandoned houses doing
the rounds, and they tend to roll a lot of eyes, mainly because of the attitude of a lot of the people running various social media pages. It's all a vapid cringefest of clickbait,
lies, people acting like they're Indiana Jones because they can climb
through a ground floor window of a rural derelict cottage, and of
course silly nicknames. In the UK, there are roughly seventy
"Murder Mansions," and to meet the criteria of being a mansion, they
simply need four walls and a door. Your garden shed is a mansion too.
But to meet the criteria of a MuRdEr MaNsIoN, it needs to be on a
youtube channel with ad revenue. But somehow the one house that actually did have a murder went straight over their heads and was nicknamed "Firemans House" instead.
The urbex world is outright farcical at this point.
But look, the doors been kicked down, and the windows are wide open. Let's slip inside.
Hmm... I've learned the hard way, never look in an abandoned fridge.
It's all rather adorable. At least, I can see that it once was. Presently the former adorability is poking out through a thick layer of ransackedness. But all this leftover stuff sure adds a vibe of
mystery to it. I personally dislike the term "time capsule" to describe
an abandoned house, because that indicates a period of time far longer
than we usually get, and it also suggests that something is preserved. But take a look around. None of this is as it was left. The house was abandoned when the
last occupant died, and then
it was looted and trashed.
Nobody has yoinked the record player though.
So way back in 1862, this was a beer house. That's actually slightly different from a pub, in that they had to be closed by 10pm, and they could only serve beer. In the 1800s, water sanitation wasn't really a thing, so it was full of disease and beer was considered a safer option. Even kids drank it. And in 1830 the government, in a rare act of altruism, introduced the Beer Act that enabled pretty much anyone, at the cost of two guineas, to brew and sell their own. Beer houses became popular and it all sounds rather homely. Some people literally ran beer houses in their front rooms. Two guineas comes to about £2.10 in decimal money, and according to the bank of England's inflation calculator that's just shy of £200 today. That's a pretty sweet deal.
I assume this was the front room.
And as you can see, the re-arranging club have been busy. I'm in two minds about that. I mean sure, I understand that people want to line up everything for a shot, but can this place really be considered a time capsule if people come in and change everything for their photos? Are we really expected to believe that the last occupants went about their day keeping their bureau wide open for the purpose of displaying the Black & White Minstrel Show next to a 1950s copy of National Geographic Magazine?
Back when it was a beer house, it was run by a couple called Anne and James, who had been married since 1807. As well as running the beer house they also kept a few cows in the fields behind, and spawned a multitude of children, which brings us to a rather sad topic. Two of Anne and James children wouldn't make it past their first year and likely passed away here. It was common enough for the era, what with poor sanitation, squalid living conditions, and vaccines being non-existent, but nevertheless it is quite sad.
James died in 1838, leaving Anne to run the beer house by herself. At the time her youngest son, also named James, was thirteen, so he would have continued living there. The other surviving children were adults now, and had moved away. But it seems that Anne wasn't too lonely. She was a popular lady in the community, and obviously she had her beer drinking clients too. As she grew older, the warden of a nearby workhouse would sometimes come to help milk her cows, and according to the 1861 census, Anne's 23-year-old grand daughter Isabella was also living in the house, her occupation listed as a dairy maid. So without disparaging the pain Anne would have felt at the loss of a loved one, she's still far from the lonely isolated widow that some people paint her to be. She has a very faithful support network.
There
were rumours that Anne was secretly wealthy, and hiding vast quantities
of dosh in the house. Tragically these rumours came back to bite her,
at least figuratively speaking. Literally speaking there was less
biting, more bludgeoning. The warden of the local workhouse came over to
milk the cows, and he noticed that the house was eerily quiet, the front door
barricaded shut and the back window wide open. He fetched another
neighbour to investigate, and they found poor Anne dead on her bed, her
hands and feet tied to the bed frame, blindfolded, gagged, and suffering
severe blows to the head that had smashed her face and caused blood to
flow from her ears. It must have been quite the beating, confounded by
the fact that she was 77. I mean, how small does your dick need to be
that beating up a little old lady reaffirms your masculinity?
But
it wasn't the head injuries that killed her. Rather she had suffocated
on the shawl they had used to gag her. What an awful way to go. 
The model cruise ship is a bitter touch. Is this God mocking me? Here's a painful reminder that my last adventure was infinitely more exciting than anything I'll ever do again.
Here's a framed aerial photo of the house.
Nevertheless the police turned their attention to the nearest available scapegoat, a guy from the local workhouse. The workhouse was built in 1823, and was apparently full of lunatics.
But in the 1800s this term was vague and can be applied to a very broad spectrum of people. Some of these people were criminals. Some of them were just gay. Some of them had mental health issues. Some of them were neuro-diverse. These places were basically dumping grounds for societies undesirables, and as any neuro-spicy person will confirm, the parameters of societal desirability are pretty damn narrow, even today.
Above the door of the workhouse was an inscription reading the bible passage "This we commanded you,
that if you would not work, neither shall you eat."
How very Auschvitz.
This room had a particularly nasty odour. I didn't stay in it for very long, but the photographs over on the cabinet deserved a closer look.
These framed images are of a lady named Barbara, the last occupant of the house, and the wife of the titular firefighter, Ken.
So initially the murder of Anne was blamed on a chap from the workhouse. He had been in the beer house the night before, and Anne had apparently kicked him out with some unpleasant words. Some of his fellow workhouse chums said that he had spoken about Anne quite a lot, making it clear that he didn't like her. He was arrested and detained, although he protested his innocence throughout. But despite holding him for longer that they legally should have, the police really didn't have much supporting evidence, so they offered £100 to whoever had information, and along came a poacher named Thomas, like a moth to a flame.
Thomas told the police about some guy called Duncan, who had been outright bragging about the murder, and had named his accomplices, Daniel, Benjamin and George.
The police were very suspicious about this, not least because Thomas the poacher had a prior conviction for shooting someone, but also because it was odd that Duncan would brag about something like this given the publicity the case was attracting. They suspected that if there was any truth to this then it was less likely that Duncan had been bragging about it, and more probable that the poacher was part of their group looking to throw the others under the bus to save his own ass.
Anne's family did know Duncan, as did the local police. He had numerous prior convictions for theft and fraud, and
he'd served seven years in Australia for perjury, because back then the
justice system punished criminals with a fucking holiday. Upon returning
he set
up a business selling groceries from a horse and
cart. This is how he met Anne. He met the rest of the family after her
death when her children were selling her former belongings, and he'd
approached her son John with an outstanding bill for Anne's bread and
cheese.
Cheeky twat.
He was also the son of a former preacher, disgraced for preaching that the working class should have
the right to vote. How dare he! Get out of God's house!
What a bonkers era the 1800s was. At that time, only male property owners could vote. The law
wasn't changed to include all males until the Representation of the
People Act of 1919, but that's another story.
Here we have a cute little cellar still full of trinkets. There's a tiny ladder propped up against the window.
What is this for? To help Borrowers get out?
There's a poor dead hedgehog on the floor. I guess it didn't see the ladder.
Back on the ground floor there's an old stair lift, which indicates the age of the last occupant. But as far as stair lifts go, this actually looks pretty cool.
It's a shame that the stair lift takes people up with their back to the window. They'd never enjoy that particular view again.
So
the story put forward by Thomas the poacher led to the arrests of
Benjamin, a 53-year-old loomer. He agreed to give evidence against the
others in exchange for his freedom. He said he and his little posse of would-be rich twats had crossed several miles
of fields with blunt weapons, and then broken into the house through the back window. While Duncan and George searched for
the money stash downstairs, Benjamin and Daniel went upstairs. Anne woke up
and screamed, so the two men held her down. Daniel whacked her across
the head with his weapon, while Duncan and George came up to see
what the commotion was about. It was apparently George who suggested
tying her down, and then they questioned her about where she kept the
money, while beating her. Eventually they fled empty handed and left poor Anne to suffocate.
The
story was verified by footprints in the fields, as well as
the weapons being where Benjamin claimed that they'd dumped them. 
With four men arrested, only three would make it to trial. Daniel, a 35-year-old with former convictions in manslaughter, died in his cell due to the squalid conditions disagreeing with his asthma.
The trial itself was all a mess of each man trying to say that they were somehow less guilty than the others, but ultimately Duncan and George both got the death penalty. In Georges case this was rather controversial because he actually had a clean record and had fought in the Crimean War. All his previous kills were legal.
But Anne was popular, and being in her seventies she was also vulnerable and beloved. Who beats up a little old lady? The public wanted their heads. They were paraded through the streets from the cells to their trial, under the abuse and taunts of an angry crowd of onlookers. Benjamin, who was let off the hook for turning in the others, returned home to find his house trashed by an angry mob. He and his wife had to flee the country.
The original suspect from the workhouse did request compensation for being detained for an illegal length of time, but he was denied this on the grounds that they shouldn't have had grounds to suspect him to begin with. That's a rather flimsy excuse. Police abusing their power? Alert the media!
And sadly, the probate report proved that Anne didn't even have that much money. It wouldn't justify murdering an old lady anyway, but it does just add another layer of pointlessness to it all. These men killed a woman, made her final moments painful and terrifying, inflicted misery on her family, and ruined their own lives, all over a silly rumour.
The upstairs rooms are similarly ransacked and bleak.
There's a newspaper here dated 1985. It's not especially significant, but I always look for the date to give an indication of when a house was last lived in.
And now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the bathroom.
Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
So a map from 1897 shows that the beer house was still running decades after Anne's murder, albeit under a different name. Someone kept the beer torch burning, although I imagine it can't have been easy moving into the home of such a brutal murder notorious among the locality. How did people feel coming to drink at the old watering hole, seeing it run by completely different people because the old familiar face was brutally murdered upstairs? I imagine after a few generations it would have become a local legend, but many of Anne's descendants do still live locally so I am curious if they know the story.
Beer Houses did decline though, and in the early 20th Century this one fell into purely residential use and was allegedly lived in by a man named Bill. Upon Bills death, the house was inherited by his son Ken and Ken's wife Barbara, who were the last occupants. Ken is the titular firefighter, the house being named "Fireman's House" due to his old 1940s uniform being found in the building. This house is where he grew old and eventually died. It's incredibly sad that there was nobody in his life to take care of his possessions, but this just drives home the eeriness of abandoned houses.
But in my opinion abandoned houses are deserving of more respect than any other kind of abandoned place. This is a memorial to someones entire life. Ken was a firefighter who probably saved a few lives in his time, and here is his former house, plundered, trashed and vandalised. And his good name is used for clickbait by silly paranormal youtubers who claim that he still haunts this house to this day.
Well, some say it's Ken the firefighter who haunts it. Others say it's Anne the murder victim. In the paranormal youtube world, ghost sightings vary depending on whether people have read about them on the internet first. The afterlife works in mysterious ways. The
actual life? Not so mysterious. People are just idiots.
And I'm quite open minded and open to the supernatural, but if it happened with enough regularity to consistently support as many paranormal youtube channels as it does, it wouldn't be supernatural. Scientists would have gotten their proof by now, and ectoplasm would be on the periodic table. These youtubers would be able to put "Paranormal investigator" on their CV, and they'd all get great jobs because proving the existence of the afterlife would be the greatest breakthrough in human history.
Here we have the final bedroom, and perhaps the eeriest part of the house. As the largest of the bedrooms, it's likely that this is where poor Anne was tied up, beaten and murdered over 160 years ago. I didn't know any of that when I was here, but nevertheless the presence of Ken and Barbara's former belongings, as well as the vast number of vintage photographs, all give it a very sad, gloomy mood.
There are a few notable points in Kens life immortalised here. His wedding, his childhood, and a group photo of his entire fire fighting squadron. It's all very sad. These memories have outlived him.
And over in the corner on the chair is the hat from his fire fighter uniform. This is the artifact that led to the house getting its nickname.
The hat has the old National Fire Service logo and apparently dates back to the 1940s. This thing belongs in a museum, not sat gathering dust in this old cottage. Unfortunately it will probably end up filling some urban explorers wallet once they figure out how to spell "hat" on their ebay listing. I'm not going to take it with me, because then I'd be no better. I'm here strictly to document, not disturb.
What's peculiar is that the colour photo of a young girl would indicate that Ken and Barbara had children and grandchildren. Where are they? Why haven't they preserved any of this?
And that's really all I've got. All abandoned houses do is decline, so unless you see an older post, you'll never see it this cool again. So personally I won't be looking. It just makes me sad. The "Firemans House" is a depressing little remnant of the past. It reflects the life of its former occupants, as well as serving as a grim reminder of our own mortality, and it's slowly getting ruined purely because there's nobody around who cares enough to barricade the doors. It's something of a local legend for any local true crime enthusiasts, and that gives it some historic significance among the locality.
But really, as far as urbex goes, a house is a house. We've seen hundreds of them, and they're becoming synonymous with everything that's wrong with urbex, not so much because the house itself is bad, but because they attract the type with itchy fingers and a propensity for clickbait titles and cringey bullshit.
I personally don't prioritise them anymore. I'll do them, but they don't excite me like they once did.
Having said that, there are a fuckload of them in the UK, so I'll no doubt feature them again, although my next spot will be a cottage hospital.
But that's it for now. If you like my blog for some reason, then you need therapy, but if you can't afford that or you want something to help pass the time while you're on their billion year waiting list, then the best way to stay updated is to follow my social media. I'm mostly active on Instagram because I like fishing in an empty barrel, but I'm also on Facebook, Vero and Reddit. Sometimes I'm on Twitter and Threads, but if you follow me on those you might have a longer wait. Ignoring those apps is how I get my dopamine.
Thanks for reading!
