Who Knew?...

So today Better Half and I went to view a house I'd seen on t'interweb that had caught my eye.

It was an old Lodge house that would once upon a time have belonged to some wealthy land owner and would have been home to one of his employees no doubt. It was a nice looking property with 5 bedrooms, 2 en suites, a family bathroom, a kitchen, dining room, huge lounge and bizarrely a sauna..and I do mean a proper, pined with benches, sauna, within the house. It also had gorgeous grounds outside with a large drive and loads of mature plants, a lawn area and a nice patio area with original outdoor cooking area from way back when...now used as a decorative patio heater.

So we head down today to have a look about...the house is in a remote spot surrounded by fields and woods to the rear. A man is waiting to meet us and basically opens the door and says to go and have a look and leaves us to it. First thing I notice when I get in is that it's not been lived in for a while, there are huge spiders crawling about and the place is freezing. We head into bedroom 1 and I'm thinking "what the ???" there's a raised platform to one trimmed with a mirror edging (which I'm thinking probably used to have a bed on it) and one wall houses a mirror from floor to ceiling. "It's like a bloody dance floor" says Better Half.

Bedroom 2 passes me by as there's nothing much of intrest, intresting decor and double white leather edged bed stripped to the mattress are all that I pick up.

We head into the houses main hallway where I spot a big spider and freak out and almost miss the fact that the hall carpet is a black and white zebra print...nice! Further in we come to the kitchen which is a pleasant room, clean and quite modern. Moving through we hit bedroom number 3...to one side is a door through to a w.c and bang in front of you in the main bedroom is a sunken in jacuzzi bath, along one wall are windows and along the other are move floor to ceiling mirrors. Bizarre I think to myself but there's no accounting for taste. Bedroom 4 comes next and is smaller than the others and has wall to ceiling units to one wall...a jumbled mismatch of woods and colours and bang in the middle is a black wooden set of drawers all built into the wall and in each drawer is a key and on the wall is what looks like a board on which the keys were once hung. It's almost like it was once some sort of office. Next room down is the main bathroom which again features huge mirrors and a shower cubicle.

We come to an area I can only describe as a recess/hallway type thing. The floor is black tile with a star design to the centre and again one wall is covered in mirror...by now I'm thinking whoever lived here must have pure loved themselves to have all these mirrors. We head on into what the estate agents have called the lounge which is in fact a large room on two levels housed in an extension part of the main building. It's a long room (about 35ft) and when we walk to the other end we come to yet another small dead space/recess/hallway which has 2 doors leading from it, one goes into the sauna...a full pine clad, benched swedish style sauna like you find in any gym, again the hallway/recess/dead space has mirrors along one wall and I'm thinking "80's aerobic studio going on in here once" as I glance up at the sunken in lights and down to the wooden floors. The second door leads to bedroom number 5 which strangely has two kitchen units in it at the door with a sink and a door which leads into yet another shower room/w.c. It again has a large mirrored area and downlighters in the ceiling and I notice the bulbs are red in at least 4 of them...I'm now thinking "whoever lived here had very bad taste"....red light bulbs, zebra print carpet, toilets a plenty, mirrors everywhere and horrid 80's decor in every room...I'm thinking it used to be some 80's lovin, kids from fame watching, aerobics mad, saturday night fever fan but I was wrong...

The man who had met us at the house wanders in to see how we're getting on. Better Half makes a comment about how big the place is and how it's a bit like a maze with all the different rooms and bits and pieces. The guy agrees and he and Better Half get into a conversation about how the place has loads of potential (which it does) and how you might want to knock this wall down and build a new one here and so on. I'm saying nothing much at this point...way too busy eyeing up incy wincy spider up in the corner of the room. "It's not really what you'd call a lounge" I hear the guy say. "No it's not, you couldn't really use it as one" says Better Half about the room we're in "This extensions a bit dodgy really, it's not been desgined for family living". "Yeah you're right, still it probably served it's purpose given what it was used for" he continues. My ears prick up as I'm thinking I'm about to find out about my 80's lovin' kids from fame watchin', aerobics mad, saturday night fever fan...The man continues..."Aye the place used to be a busy brothel until business got slack and it was repossessed".

Better Half manages to get words together quicker than me for the first time ever and says "Well that explains all the bloody mirrors and a few other things!" Oh it did indeed! All of a sudden the mirrors, dodgy decor, baths in bedrooms, sauna, red light bulbs and locked drawers made sense!

We headed out to look at the grounds and the man locked up and left us to wander as he headed of in his car into the wilderness around us. We peered in the window of what had been bedroom 1 with it's raised platform and Better Half's words about it looking like a dance floor came into both our heads and he said "all that's missing is the pole". We left the house and got in the car to head home.

I don't think we'll head back again...not because of what it used to be but it's the wrong location.

Jenny xx