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Inside The Derelict Cornwall Cottage That No-One Is Allowed To Enter

Inside The Derelict Cornwall Cottage That No-One Is Allowed To Enter

It's a project, to say the least

Tom Wood

Tom Wood

After thirty years lying in near complete abandonment, one intrepid photojournalist has finally been allowed back into a house in Cornwall that has almost entirely been reclaimed by nature.

The house near Newquay is called Lavender Cottage, and has been described as an 'exciting development opportunity', but looking at it, you'd have to have a lot of money and patience to sort out this particular property.

To say it's a fixer-upper would be one of the larger understatements you'll ever hear.

In fact, potential buyers are warned 'DO NOT enter the cottage UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES', so you'd be buying blind anyway.

Greg Martin/Reach

You know it's bad when they use capital letters.

Despite that, it went onto the market in 2017 for £250,000, and later for offers around £235,000.

Well, in case that price drop interests you, here's a long-awaited look inside.

Exploring the property for Cornwall Live, Greg Martin managed to get access permission from the owner - at his own risk - and crawled through the brambles and nettles to get inside the cottage.

After finding a way in through the window, he discovered a time capsule that has artefacts from a different world hidden within.

The cottage itself is first spotted on a historical map in 1875, but has been left in the current state for the last few decades.

Greg Martin/Reach

There are Coke cans that have sat inside since before the Berlin Wall came down, and bottles of Corona beer that still bear evidence of a bottle-returning scheme that hasn't existed since the 1980s.

In case you're wondering, the 20p you could get for returning the two bottles is included in the house price.

Several attempts have been made to renovate the house, in 1996 and 2002 for example, but despite that it still sits unoccupied and falling ever further into disrepair.

A caravan sits in the garden - if you can call it that - as a monument to one such failed repair job.

Greg Martin/Reach

Martin wrote: "Despite the cottage being off limits to any prospective buyers, the estate agents say that they have had a lot of interest in the derelict property which sits on a plot of approximately 0.43 of an acre.

"However, no-one has snapped it up yet, and not being able to see inside it might not be the only factor putting people off."

Go on, what could be worse than the fact that it's completely wrecked and overgrown?

Martin continued: "Last year, someone who was interested in the property wrote to Cornwall Council for pre-application advice on demolishing the cottage and replacing it with a new house.

"However, the advice that came back to them explained that the cottage was in an area where a new building would not be considered acceptable, unless it was a 'replacement dwelling', replacing a house that had 'an existing lawful use'.

"But having been abandoned for so long, the concern raised was that Lavender Cottage no longer had a lawful use as a home."

Greg Martin/Reach

Oh, great. You can't even level it and build again.

If this hasn't put you off, you can get details about the house from Camel Homes. Just don't ask them to have a look around.

Featured Image Credit: Greg Martin/Reach

Topics: UK News, Interesting, Weird