DERELICTION IN A NEARBY VILLAGE

We had a good service at Church and although it was drizzling, Mr. HCB and our older son, Martyn, went off to cricket - actually, he "snook off" before the end of the service!  I have been checking regularly and it looks as if the covers are off and they are playing so hopefully they will see a good match against Surrey and of course, Mr. HCB will be hoping for a win for his team, especially as the Friday evening game was abandoned without a ball being bowled.

I decided to stay fairly near home, so went out to a small village near us called Wanborough.  I never realised how difficult it is to find things when one is alone in the car, so I went quite slowly to see if I could see any dereliction and I was rewarded when I came across this quite large house, which I believe is called “The Ropers”, in Church Road.  You can see from the state of the roof that it must be pretty damp inside.

There are two parts to the village of Wanborough, Upper and Lower and The Ropers is in Upper Wanborough.  It is about 3 miles from where we live and very near to the M4 motorway.  Both parts of this village have separate identities but locally they are considered as one village community, surrounded by beautiful open countryside, although today it was rather grey and drizzly.

I searched on Google and found a document relating to the Conservation area in Upper Wanborough, which contains the following information about the village:

Upper Wanborough is on the Icknield Way, an ancient trackway in southern and eastern England that runs from Norfolk to Wiltshire following the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and the Chiltern Hills.  It is thought to be one of the oldest roads, being one of the few long-distance trackways to have existed before the Romans occupied this country.  There was a Roman settlement near Lower Wanborough (Durocornovium) and the Roman road, Ermin Street, which also passes through Swindon, runs very near.  The Domesday Book of 1086 refers to the settlement of 'Wemberge' and Wanborough is one of the few settlements in north-east Wiltshire that has documentary claim to Anglo-Saxon origins. 

This document was written in 1997 and there is no mention of The Ropers being derelict then.  However, further investigation revealed that it was sold in 2014 for the sum of £249,995, which I assume included the old brick-built barn next door shown at the bottom left of my collage.  I found the Agents' Particulars and it is interesting to look at the photographs of the inside of the property.  I was quite surprised to see the state of some of the rooms and wonder if an old person had lived there and then died, so the house was then sold. 

What a shame that a property with such potential has been allowed to get into the state it’s in today.  There are safety railings all round the outside of the property, so I had to put my hands through to take a photograph, but I can find no mention of a developer’s name, if indeed it has been bought by a developer.  However, the roof is completely stripped of tiles, so the inside must be in a very bad condition now.  

I might just go into the nearby pub, The New Calley Arms, one day with Mr. HCB to see if they know anything about this house, which is two doors’ away.  After all, it can’t be good to have an eyesore like this in the middle of the village and very near to the pub.  

If you looked at the photographs in the Agents' Particulars, this quote just about sums them up, but I think it will take a lot of work to get this property back to a good state of repair:

“A lot of things in the house were broken or forgotten: 
the kitchen clock stopped, 
a closet doorknob coming off in my hand. 
The sparkly mess of flies I'd swept from the corners. 
It took sustained, constant living to ward off decay.” 
Emma Cline : The Girls