Urban grot with charm potential

What interesting comments from everyone yesterday - thank you!

Most of those bold enough to guess went for rural but Ceridwen was spot on about the cobbles - it's 350m from the very centre of Oxford. I've now tagged it on the map if anyone's interested.

I'm not sure how much context affects judgment - though I think Anni is right that the camera readily isolates its subject - but I would have reacted differently to find this two miles out of town. It's the back half of a listed 16th-century building opposite Christ Church. The collapsing front half was renovated a few years ago and until this week I had no idea that the back looked like this. I think it should also be rescued and I'm not sure I'd feel so strongly if it was rural.

It's interesting to consider age too. Maybe 'grotty 60s or 70s structures' are so ubiquitous that we don't value them yet...

This door is only about 1.2 m high. Clearly it's needed a kick recently, and - another surprise - the light shows this building is in use. I shall try to discover more and might even manage to climb on something to blip the roof. It's quite a sight - windblown plastic and broken battens.