more abandoned houses

I’ve been taking a closer look at a couple of recently abandoned houses in the area now being developed in our neighbourhood. Their locations are shown in the following map, which I photographed hanging on a fence. Among other things, it indicates that a large area of paths will be closed on 15th November, which is next Monday. After that date, I won’t be able to gain access to any more abandoned houses in the area, although all that remains of most other houses is a pile of rubble anyway.

This is the first house, which I’ve probably walked past hundreds of times in the past 13 years:

The approximate location is indicated by the yellow circle on the map.

Notice the writing on the wall. It’s a poetic lament that was almost certainly written by the last occupants. They are lamenting the loss of what they clearly thought of as their home. I will never know for certain, but there’s a good chance that they lived here longer than I’ve lived in the neighbourhood. This is a closer look at the lament, which was written at the time of the last Mid-Autumn Festival, usually a time for celebration:

And this is what I saw when I stepped through the door and looked right:

I’ll wager that the fridge-freezer is still serviceable, and that the occupants weren’t given time to take anything with them that they couldn’t carry when they were told to leave.

And this was their kitchen:

…while this was the main living room:

There were two bedrooms downstairs:

As in other houses that I’ve visited recently, the stairs are extremely steep:

At least there’s a secure if apparently makeshift handrail, or I probably wouldn’t have attempted to venture upstairs, where there was just one bedroom:

This is a vertigo-inducing view of the stairs from above:

I estimate the angle at around 65 degrees!

The location of the other house that I’ve looked at recently is indicated by the blue circle on the map. I particularly wanted to check this house because when it was still occupied, it was policed by an extremely aggressive dog that always snarled at me whenever I walked past. Fortunately, for the dog, there was a wire fence between us. Here are two views from the outside:

I included the first picture because it shows that among the items abandoned here are two wheelchairs!

In fact, there wasn’t much to see in this single-storey house, but I was staggered to note that the main room has a marble floor!

This was, apparently, the only bedroom, complete with mosquito net over the bed:

I’m not sure of the purpose of this room, which may have been just a storage space for clothes:

Every other house in the area has already been demolished, so I don’t expect to write anything more on the subject for the time being, although that is likely to change as the ‘development’ continues.