Saturday 11 April 2015

Abandoned.



Abandoned houses used to be common here; now much less so. The attractive ones have been sold and restored; the ugly ones left to fall down.


This particular one is on my weekly shopping route, and I've been meaning to stop to take a few photos for years. The house itself is of no interest, and will be left to rot. Meanwhile local children have amused themselves breaking anything breakable.


The only things of interest now are the rotting contents. Cars, bikes, old wooden barrels; all as they were on the day the last inhabitants departed. 


One has to wonder what happened. Did the owner die, with no-one to inherit? Has someone decided to preserve it as a Museum of Mighty Mess? Is it being kept as a Wildlife Park?


It looks as if the owner had very small feet; these were by the front door. Maybe an elderly lady was taken away in her slippers!

All rather sad.



19 comments:

  1. There's probably four sons and a daughter somewhere who don't agree on what do...

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    1. There are abandoned properties like this in rural Norfolk, one very near where I live. It is usually family disagreements that result in nothing happening. 3 sisters left a property to go derelict for 30 years because one wouldn't sign papers to sell. Now all are in their 80s and I see something is being done. My own family came very close to such madness.

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    2. French inheritance laws are notorious for such things. No-one can be disinherited, leading to multi owned properties. It only takes one....

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Too many mistakes i think so i shall comment some other time.

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    2. Please don't worry about minor grammatical mistakes Yael... we really don't mind. It's just good to hear from you.

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  3. I'm intrigued by the photos. We have two station wagons from the 1980s, bought within a few years of each other --one fitted with a trailer-hitch mount-- and shelves of barrels with plastic jerry-cans under and yellow hose hung above. Some sort of business was conducted here, perhaps agricultural --pesticides? herbicides?-- or marking soccer fields --there would be sacks of dolomite. So we must conclude it was large-scale weed or pest abatement. However, there is a wheeled device hung left of the barrels that could bear an athletic field paint-sprayer --which largely replaced dolomite chalk by 1990. The bicycle in the weeds is a 10-speed ladies' model that doesn't go with the wheels on top of it. They are 20'' remnants of a child bicycle --possibly connected with the tiny shoes. In all, quite an enigma. I'm fond of enigmas. And, like you and other commenters, I sense tragedy there but see no data for further speculation.

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    1. The barrels I think are simply wine barrels, the plastic containers smelt as if they held sump-oil, and the wheeled device looked like an old pram. I could have taken so many more pictures, there were other buildings equally filled with junk. Maybe I'll return one day.

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  4. Mr. Magnon...
    you have excelled this time...
    what a wonderful collection.
    They owned not one, but two, Citroen CX estates...
    we used to, too...
    great drive, but the stuffiest cars around...
    the cold air intake was just in front of the windscreen...
    the cold air was pre-heated by passing over the hot bonnet...
    the engine was directly in front of the intake!!
    And they are a devil to park...
    it is impossible to see the corners from the driving seat...
    or the kerb from the door...
    you have to park and take a taxi to the kerb!!

    I think that the inhabitants were taken away by men in white jackets....
    who came with unfashionable, ultralong sleeved jackets....
    with straps...
    for the keepers of the barrels to wear!!
    That's what happens when you drive a CX for too long...
    and they had had two!!

    We swopped ours for a Merc Estate when the gear linkages went whoopsie....
    so, whilst the new car nags if we don't get out...
    immediately we've turned off the engine...
    or screams at us if the lights are on and we dare to get out...
    at least we have our sanity back...
    are cool when driving in hot weather...
    and have saved on taxi fares to the kerb...
    almost...

    wurble, wurble, wurble, wheeeeeee....
    dribbles...
    laughs uncontrollably...
    presses post button!

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    1. There used to be (no more) a very big car scrap yard in this village, it makes you wonder why they didn't cash in. 2 CX's must have been worth a tenner!

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  5. Why does your township (or whatever the French call it) allow this mess to go on attracting rodents and endangering children? There has to be an owner. They should be accountable for cleaning the thing up. It is a very sad sight indeed.

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    1. This isn't in MY village. I don't think there are any rules covering such things as tidiness, otherwise the whole of France would be in trouble.

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  6. The things left of one's life. It is very sad to see.

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  7. I wonder if the lower value of land in France has something to do with it?
    In the UK any plot big enough to build on is worth quite a bit, so properties around us are rarely left to fall down. There's always someone who thinks it's worth selling for the land alone.

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    1. This particular house was built on very sloping ground. I think the land is almost worthless.

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  8. It really is rather sad and I also wonder what the story is. I know a family who nearly deserted their family home because they couldn't get one of their siblings to agree to the sale -- The laws left them little choice and they didn't want to keep it. But finally an agreement was made, and they sold it. Perhaps this is the same kind of story with other homes too.

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