Crooked Cottage - Home abandoned in 1950's

[Fata Morgana]

These eerie photographs show a house left untouched since its owners left it more than half a century ago.
Known as the Crooked Cottage, this mysterious, rural Hertfordshire home still has a made-up double bed, full jars of gooseberries and a calendar - dating back to December 1956.
It is said to have been lived in by a married couple. When the husband died, his wife remained there until being taken into care.


Check this out, it's bloody fascinating. I would love to have a rummage in this place.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-filled-food-belongings-long-dead-couple.html

 

[lovetoread]

I would love to see that.

Buts it's sad they had no one to collect their things.

 

[Fata Morgana]

I would love to see that.

Buts it's sad they had no one to collect their things.

We could have gone round on Halloween!

It's very, very sad isn't it. Wonder if those gooseberries have gone off...

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

Those olives look fresher than the ones in my fridge...crap, now I want a martini.

 

[thør]

These eerie photographs show a house left untouched since its owners left it more than half a century ago.
Known as the Crooked Cottage, this mysterious, rural Hertfordshire home still has a made-up double bed, full jars of gooseberries and a calendar - dating back to December 1956.
It is said to have been lived in by a married couple. When the husband died, his wife remained there until being taken into care.


Check this out, it's bloody fascinating. I would love to have a rummage in this place.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-filled-food-belongings-long-dead-couple.html

You'd think there might be family out there who would want the photos.

 

[Fata Morgana]

Those olives look fresher than the ones in my fridge...crap, now I want a martini.

They're gooseberries.

 

[Fata Morgana]

You'd think there might be family out there who would want the photos.

I'll have them. And the bed. Mind you, it might be haunted.

My mum had some Christmas decorations exactly the same as one of those on the photos when I was a child.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

They're gooseberries.

Olive flavored gooseberries.

 

[Fata Morgana]

Olive flavored gooseberries.

No one living in a house like that in 50's Britain would have jars and jars of olives!

Who's that woman in your av?

 

[MonaLittle]

Oh, I Love that bed frame.

Ans, I'd love to get my hands on some of that furniture and re-purpose/distress it. These are some good, solid pieces there.

 

[Fata Morgana]

Oh, I Love that bed frame.

Ans, I'd love to get my hands on some of that furniture and re-purpose/distress it. These are some good, solid pieces there.

You, me and LTR should go round and stake our claim! We'll let Ann have the gooseberries to play with and he can pretend they're olives. Bless.

 

[shewantsmore]

all those memories and things that's taken a life time to collect,its so sad that's its just there unwanted.I would not want to be there after dark

 

[MonaLittle]

That sounds like a fun afternoon. Im in!

With a little TLC, some of those things in the photos could be real treasures.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

No one living in a house like that in 50's Britain would have jars and jars of olives!

Who's that woman in your av?

Maybe they were Italian.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Back in the 50s my old man owned a construction company, and in those days 1000s of old farms and orange groves were destroyed to use the land for new development. My old man harvested timber and had salvage rights to the land, as part of the contract. So he brought home loads of antiques, mostly ancient furniture my mom sent to the upholsterer. Lots of kerosene lamps. Plus old roses and lilies, and fruit no one has any idea grew around here...mangoes, limes, and pears.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

No one living in a house like that in 50's Britain would have jars and jars of olives!

Who's that woman in your av?

Who's that woman in your av?

 

[Fata Morgana]

Who's that woman in your av?

Kate Bush.

 

[oggbashan]

When we were househunting in the months before we married, we looked at many decrepit buildings because they were in our price range.

They might have been, but although we could buy them, we couldn't afford the cost of renovating them as well. The lenders wouldn't give a reasonable mortgage on the asking price, so all our savings would have gone on the balance.

I still remember several houses.

One had gas lighting downstairs and oil lamps upstairs. There was no electricity at all. The tap over the sink was the only plumbing in the house. The water had to be pumped by hand from the well to a tank in the kitchen ceiling. The cooker was a coal fired range. The toilet? A collapsing outhouse at the end of the garden, 200 feet from the house. The bath? A galvanised one was hanging on a hook in the scullery.

Another, much larger house was Victorian. It was enormous. The bathroom had a magnificent shower, all brass and copper. But the roof had collapsed - not mentioned by the estate agent's details.

A third was very small and in just the right place. I could walk to the station to commute to London, my wife-to-be could walk to the school where she was teaching. The bathroom was a conversion of the scullery behind the kitchen. On the upper floor there were two small bedrooms and nothing else. Downstairs there was a living room with the front door in a corner. The small kitchen was behind that. We loved the garden. It was as narrow as the house but went on and on for 350 feet, slightly downhill until the fence of the railway line.

While we were looking at the house and in the bathroom at the back of the house we knew that another couple were following in a few minutes so we were waiting for a knock on the front door. We heard the knock. I opened the front door. No one there. The knock we had heard was three doors away. Why had we heard it so clearly?

The answer was simple. The front and back walls of the whole row were brick, one brick thick. The room divisions and the partitions between houses were a single sheet of plasterboard. Any word spoken in a house could be clearly heard in the houses on either side. As for a music system or TV? The whole row could hear them.

A fourth house had been modernised, rewired and replumbed. But I was suspicious. It was too cheap for what had been done to it. I looked at the fuze board. The fuzes were dated 1914 and rubber and/or lead covered wires lead from it. How could that be if it had just been rewired? I unscrewed the cover to one modern socket. The original 1914 wires had been connected to a modern face. As for the plumbing? The pipes were new as was the back boiler to the gas fire. But the pipes didn't connect to the taps. The hot water went from the back boiler to the hot water tank and back again in a closed circuit. The new pipes were just for show.

The fifth house was up for auction. We looked but knew we couldn't bid. In those days you needed to have cash in hand to bid at auction. It was an old farmhouse, larger than Crooked Cottage but the family had moved out in 1920 leaving their grandparents' possessions in place as they had been in 1920. They had moved into a then modern single-storey house but both sons had been injured in the First World War, which is why they needed everything on the ground floor. Both died within five years, leaving a married sister to inherit everything. She was living in London and had rented out the 'modern' house and the farm to another local farmer. The old house had received basic maintenance so it was still weatherproof, and it was too far from anywhere to be vandalised. The auction of the old farmhouse was after she had died in her late 90s. It was a 1920 time-warp exactly as it had been when her grandparents had lived there. The contents sold for more than the house because the grandparents had been well-off for 1920 and everything they owned was good quality and in pristine condition.

When were these five houses? At the start of the 1970s.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

Kate Bush.

I like some of her music.

 

[Fata Morgana]

When we were househunting in the months before we married, we looked at many decrepit buildings because they were in our price range.

They might have been, but although we could buy them, we couldn't afford the cost of renovating them as well. The lenders wouldn't give a reasonable mortgage on the asking price, so all our savings would have gone on the balance.

I still remember several houses.

One had gas lighting downstairs and oil lamps upstairs. There was no electricity at all. The tap over the sink was the only plumbing in the house. The water had to be pumped by hand from the well to a tank in the kitchen ceiling. The cooker was a coal fired range. The toilet? A collapsing outhouse at the end of the garden, 200 feet from the house. The bath? A galvanised one was hanging on a hook in the scullery.

Another, much larger house was Victorian. It was enormous. The bathroom had a magnificent shower, all brass and copper. But the roof had collapsed - not mentioned by the estate agent's details.

A third was very small and in just the right place. I could walk to the station to commute to London, my wife-to-be could walk to the school where she was teaching. The bathroom was a conversion of the scullery behind the kitchen. On the upper floor there were two small bedrooms and nothing else. Downstairs there was a living room with the front door in a corner. The small kitchen was behind that. We loved the garden. It was as narrow as the house but went on and on for 350 feet, slightly downhill until the fence of the railway line.

While we were looking at the house and in the bathroom at the back of the house we knew that another couple were following in a few minutes so we were waiting for a knock on the front door. We heard the knock. I opened the front door. No one there. The knock we had heard was three doors away. Why had we heard it so clearly?

The answer was simple. The front and back walls of the whole row were brick, one brick thick. The room divisions and the partitions between houses were a single sheet of plasterboard. Any word spoken in a house could be clearly heard in the houses on either side. As for a music system or TV? The whole row could hear them.

A fourth house had been modernised, rewired and replumbed. But I was suspicious. It was too cheap for what had been done to it. I looked at the fuze board. The fuzes were dated 1914 and rubber and/or lead covered wires lead from it. How could that be if it had just been rewired? I unscrewed the cover to one modern socket. The original 1914 wires had been connected to a modern face. As for the plumbing? The pipes were new as was the back boiler to the gas fire. But the pipes didn't connect to the taps. The hot water went from the back boiler to the hot water tank and back again in a closed circuit. The new pipes were just for show.

The fifth house was up for auction. We looked but knew we couldn't bid. In those days you needed to have cash in hand to bid at auction. It was an old farmhouse, larger than Crooked Cottage but the family had moved out in 1920 leaving their grandparents' possessions in place as they had been in 1920. They had moved into a then modern single-storey house but both sons had been injured in the First World War, which is why they needed everything on the ground floor. Both died within five years, leaving a married sister to inherit everything. She was living in London and had rented out the 'modern' house and the farm to another local farmer. The old house had received basic maintenance so it was still weatherproof, and it was too far from anywhere to be vandalised. The auction of the old farmhouse was after she had died in her late 90s. It was a 1920 time-warp exactly as it had been when her grandparents had lived there. The contents sold for more than the house because the grandparents had been well-off for 1920 and everything they owned was good quality and in pristine condition.

When were these five houses? At the start of the 1970s.

You have the most interesting tales. You should write a book. I'd read it.

 

[dolf]

20 years back they demolished an old cottage that was stuck out in the middle of the fens, hidden by trees. i'd been inside and it was just like hat. a home abandoned, a pair of glasses still on the windowsill, furniture in place. if I trusted the floorboards i'd've explored more, but it was close to collapse.

 

[oggbashan]

In the 1970s I used to visit a secondhand bookshop in the small town of Cranbrook, Kent. A few doors away was an old shop that had been a general ironmongers but the owner had retired in the late 1940s.

He had shut the shop door and just left it with all the stock in place and visible through the shop window. Most of the items were from the 1930s and still new, in their wrappings/packaging as supplied. That shop stayed untouched until the late 1980s when he moved into a retirement home and the shop was sold with its contents. The local museum bought some items but most went to local collectors.

Again in the 1970s a shop closed near Tonbridge in Kent. Recently it had been a greengrocers but the owners had moved to larger premises nearby. But BEFORE it had been a greengrocers it had been a toy shop until the mid 1960s and the remains of the toy shop's stock had been in an untouched store room. I heard about it slightly too late, but I was still able to buy a brand-new, unopened Triang Electric Train Set from 1959.

A few years ago a local stationers closed. In the last few days they sold all their remaining stock at silly prices. I bought a pack of a dozen Parker Ball Pen refills for 50 pence for the dozen, and several copies of a guide to the town, published in 1910 and never opened, for 50 pence each.

Earlier this year we were in Lancashire. We wanted to send postcards to our grandchildren but we couldn't find any suitable ones. There was a kiosk selling sweets and ice-cream on the seafront so I asked where I could buy postcards.

"If you don't mind them being dated," the owner said, "I have some here."

He scrabbled around under the counter and produced a shoe box full of postcards. We bought two of each at 10 pence each, spending a whole two pounds. The most modern one showed cars from the early 1960s.

 

[Fata Morgana]

I love looking through old postcards. I'm using one as bookmark at the moment from 1915. It's one a young woman sent her father in Westcliff On Sea from Cairo. It's beautiful written and frightfully proper.

 

[torchthebitch]

I used to share a bed like that with my brothers! The difference was it didn't have brass. I used to sit on chairs like those when I visited my aunts. My mum used scales like those and I still have the weights somewhere, and she had a Lloyd Loom bedroom chair like the one shown too.

 

[Bad_Doggie]

I love looking through old postcards. I'm using one as bookmark at the moment from 1915. It's one a young woman sent her father in Westcliff On Sea from Cairo. It's beautiful written and frightfully proper.

Westcliff On Sea is where I spent most of my childhood holidays. The place echoes many happy memories and faces no longer with us. I still go there whenever I’m in Kent.

Six degrees of separation?

Woof!