Strange house - ransacked and graves!

[Woollypullover]

Currently looking at houses in this area and have come across this place. Why do you think it's so messy? Is this just delapidation or has it been maybe burgled? I don't think I can live with graves in the garden. Seems very spooky but was probably a very nice house at some point. Very old.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/150025598#/?channel=RES_BUY

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Affleck_Graves en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Affleck_Graves]]]]
Ida ‘s wikipedia page. She sounds fab.

I know a few houses that have very old graves in the garden. I don’t think it’s actually that difficult to get permission to bury a body in a garden now (obviously there are proper routes and paperwork to go through) but most people don’t want to have their relatives in the back garden.

I'm now going down a rabbit hole that I didnt expect to! Heres a trailer for a film about Ida's daughter and has a picture of Ida in it

@Woollypullover I agree. A fascinating lady and story.

@Woollypullover surely you have to go and see round it! Other details of interest: she wasn't married to Blair Hughes Stanton as her previous husband wouldn't divorce, just took the children and gave her an allowance. Wonder if that complicated the house ownership issue.

They look (to my amateur eye!) genuinely old!

I’ve seen similar in a house built in the late 1700s, so maybe they date back to then?

The house looks like someone’s taken it on as a project but gave up!

Edit: having read more of the thread the paintings probably aren’t that old!

LOL that the EA omitted to say ‘no onward chain’.

And warn that ‘upmost caution ‘ will be needed when viewing. It’s ‘utmost’ you numpties!

Beautiful house once restored, but right on the road.

My maternal line on my dad's side were Graves, lots of strong interesting women there too. I wonder if it was a trait of women of a particular age and background during that time (or maybe we're tenuously related 😉)

If I had the money for a professional restoration, I would have it like a shot.

There's a bit about her daughter Kristin Baybars on radio 4 Last Word which mentions the dolls house in the attic- she made it at school !

They look (to my amateur eye!) genuinely old!

Mine too - some of them. They will have been restored, and possibly that is where the dating could have been confused. The yellower staircase ones, I'd hedge my bets, are older than they're saying - the staircase itself would have made it a very inaccessible place to tinker with and it will have been there as the original, only, staircase. Hard to tell with a photo. The pinker ones remind me of some unusual little finds that survive on plaster behind panelling and are found after the panelling goes - 2 patches I'm thinking of are in Cambridge in a small room in one of the colleges. The floral ones (black on white) are really lovely but not able to tell age there, though they look more like house plastering designs that are usually seen as outside house decoration in the area.

It's interesting in that trailer for the film about Kristin (thanks for posting @Woollypullover ) that she says she lived her childhood in, 'pretty great poverty' which made her inventive.

She obviously had a very upper middle-class upbringing and lived in this amazing house, but I suppose that doesn't always equate to 'cash rich' if her parents were both artists and of course she (Kristen) was only 4 when WW2 broke out.

Not to wang on about my own family situation - but my great aunt lived in a comparable house until 1978... no indoor bathroom (which would explain the more recent water tank in this one) no money to do repairs. She was over the moon when she sold it in her 70s and moved into a very average three bed bungalow!!

I'd love to track down the whole film!

Lovely read, made me sad what she says about emotional attachment to a childhood home. Link here: amp.theguardian.com/theobserver/2007/dec/09/magazine.features7

Kirsten's daughter is a freelance children's book editor. How lovely. Also sorry, I've gone down the rabbit hole.

Lovely find!

The full version of that film is here dollshouseshowcase.com/2024/02/25/kristin-baybars-her-aladdins-cave/

Thought I'd revisit this thread as I've stumbled upon this.
Is this Kirsten's toy shop? I chanced upon it as I'm looking at houses in hampstead

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/150317783

I wonder do they have a pirate memory game?

it is!
A sad sight- I hope someone is saving the toys somehow

What a fantastic place! I'd love to be it's custodian. Anybody got some (lots of) money they can spare me?

My ideal house. It's slightly over budget but there's no way I could afford the refurb. It looks gutted rather than ransacked though.

What an amazing house. It’s still beautiful even in its decayed state. I hope someone can bring it back to life. Alas, it is going to require exceedingly deep pockets.

I remember visiting Kristin Baybars’ miniatures shop many years ago and it was absolutely magical. It’s sad to see all the tiny treasures she stocked just lying abandoned.

Oh how lovely, and lucky you got to visit the store.
I hope they donate the toys, or that the pics in this listing are old. I googled and looks like she passed in '21, surely they've not left the toys abandoned since then! :(
Interestingly, I went back to the listing of her childhood home (start of thread) and there's a doll house abandoned, looks so much like the ones she had stocked in her store.

I think the house listing photos have changed, it's been cleared.
They're both mesmerising!

As long as its not in the water table you can be buried anywhere (well you have to own it or have permission, not just some randoms garden lol).

You however cannot just be 'dumped in the bin' because theres 'far too much paperwork' as the funeral director was very blunt about that when my grumpy old dad kept saying it.

I want to buy my own land for a family grave, modern church graves are only 'rented' for 100 years but if its your own land you can stay indefinitely (unless someone rude digs you up).