Lonely House. A five minute written by Charles Roberts

 

          It was a Manor house, at one time, but now it stands forlorn gazing out over the untended parkland which surrounds it.  Its glassless windows looking blindly out at the encroaching woodland like shutter less eyes staring across the wide expanse of grass and scrub which once were lawns and rose gardens.  The cast iron roof guttering cluttered with dead and decaying leaves, grass and saplings growing here and there along their length.

          Moss and grass growing on the rotting wooden window frames like lashes round the eyes. Multi-coloured Graffiti covering the walls both inside and out.  The once ornate oak door hanging, like a lopsided smile, by one brass hinge, a mark in the centre of the door where the large brass lions head door knocker once hung, but now prised off, unceremoniously with a crow bar the screws torn out and tossed to one side like some sort of detritus.

          Inside the ceilings cover the downstairs floors; the cast iron balustrade which gently curves round, hangs precariously from an upstairs wall and sways in the breeze, the mahogany stairs long since removed to use somewhere else.  The tiled hall floor is open to the sky and hawthorn, elderberry and sycamore trees grow from the windblown debris and plaster which has fallen from and is piled up against the walls.

          Ivy clings to any wall or surface it can get its roots into, crawling up the outside and inside walls, pushing what is left of the roof off.  A hawthorn tree clings perilously to life as it grows out of a half collapsed wall, its roots winding their way down, following the mortar lines between the bricks.  Birds nesting in its spindly branches, protected by its thorns and height.  Wild roses clamber along another half demolished wall, taken for the old bricks which someone thought they could sell or build a garden wall out of; the light pink flowers looking clean, fresh, and incongruous in such a scene of decay.

          And everywhere mosses grow where the rain can reach, they in turn collect dust and debris to create soil for grasses, windblown plant, and tree seeds to grow in; creating micro climates to encourage the growth.  A sycamore tree pushes up from the former kitchen floor where the ceiling has collapsed and the wind has blown the debris into a pile for it to get its roots into.  An elderberry in the old sink, its roots crawling down the drain and its branches reaching out for the sky, covers itself in sweet smelling blossom and attracts the bees and wasps which have nests in the crumbling brickwork.

          The former owner leaving the Manor house to decay in an act of spite to the local council for compulsory purchasing some of his land to build a by-pass round the town and cutting down ancient woodland in the process.