share photos of old, abandoned, uninhabited structures in your part of the world!

I always had this interest in taking photos of abandoned houses, churches and barns...outbuildings, schools...I thought it would be interesting to chronical their 'melting' into their surroundings.
Of course I didn't do that but still like to take pictures of old farmsteads when I can, especially on our frequent hikes in the Buffalo River National Park.
It's interesting to imagine where the fields and gardens were even though the Forest has reclaimed them.

So, here's a few to begin...please share more from where ever you live😊

I will try to get some pics up.  I love finding isolated plantings of flowers, some gravel, a pot, and maybe a toy or two in the woods.  The remains of a homestead.  As I explore, I am also careful to watch out for wells.  One surprise can ruin your day.

John F Dean wrote:I will try to get some pics up.  I love finding isolated plantings of flowers, some gravel, a pot, and maybe a toy or two in the woods.  The remains of a homestead.  As I explore, I am also careful to watch out for wells.  One surprise can ruin your day.

Yes! all of those small artifacts, those and plants tell a more personal story!
We do see wells and some are uncapped...have not knowingly 'found' an old ground level one🫤

Looking forward to photos!

a school house along Calf Creek...

...a home in the spring

It's interesting that the plants that survive the longest are almost always jonquils, vinca, creeping charlie, wisteria...rarely any food crops but occasionally garlic...not the wild ones but cloves that I've later replanted and eventually reach nice size.

We see Iris and daylilies sometimes in more open spots where the forest has not encroached as much.

Great photos, yet some look like places I have actually rented in bygone risky days.  I have a couple to share...

And two homes I was renting for 50 per month, while helping to repair.  That tree really helped to ventilate, we had maximum breathability I guess you could say.

Those are great examples Rick!
I especially love the church.

and I know what you mean about living in falling down houses though😊
I've 'camped' in a few years ago.

A lot of the small cabins here had no insulation and the lumber was usually sawn at a local or home owned mill...I like seeing the repairs made over the decades to keep them standing.

The old sheds here are mostly made of stone, so they crumble more gently.

Our shed is actually the original house, and whilst it's still in reasonable condition and not abandoned I thought you might like to see it.

Here it is gleaming in the sunlight early one morning. Rock for scale, because he likes posing by things for me.



Originally the roof would have been thatch, which would be replaced every twenty years or so. Gradually the thatch roofs have been replaced with tiles, slate, or in this case corrugated iron.

There are grape vines growing near the door.



With some very nice grapes...



Outside there was a bench, which we need to rescue. The seat was made from a rescued drain cover from the railway which runs just the other side of the track.



The very flat faced stone to the left of the door has a date carved into it. I think it says 'anno 1858'.



Close up of the door handle and latch. The handle broke in half and Austin has just fixed it by wrapping wire round and round it. Seems to work...



The far wall is bulging rather concerningly near the base and will likely have to be rebuilt in the relatively near future.



The main beam supporting the roof comes right through the wall and has a protective bit of steel nailed over it. And a red cross painted on, though I have no idea of the significance of that.



The shed is mostly used for storage, but it also houses the humanure loo, which is due to be replaced by a willow feeder in the very near future. The local stone houses all have these wonderful alcoves in, originally for standing lamps in where they are relatively safe from being knocked over. This one has a couple of lamps shoved in there too, not for use but because they seem relatively safe there.



I hope some of you found it interesting!

This isn't a home or barn, but an industrial building or shop that we found on a hike summer before last. But the third picture does show an outbuilding. So much graffiti!

Burra, what a lovely set of photos!
a building with history and a bit of mystery and character...mends and bulges and all.


Christopher, I love those! both the buildings and the graffiti!
I'll see if I can edit the title to include more structures in general.


My main interest was that they be old enough that more natural materials were used and to see how they weathered and aged and were treated over decades....wood, stone, adobe, metal, concrete (others?) bamboo?

Plus, I really enjoy seeing 'mends' whether it's structures or cloth.

Adobe

I just remembered I had these two photos of the door to an abandoned pub in the next town.

Rock wasn't with us so I persuaded my son to do the for scale thing...

Here are some photos I took in 2019 of an abandoned building a few miles away.

Clay tiles, wattle and daub, stone walls and lintels, and one of those little alcoves for standing a lamp.

I should try to get an update photo sometime as I think it's collapsed a bit more now.

I love these pictures but at the same time,  they break my heart,  especially the old wooden buildings that are sagging under the weight of their age. They seem so sad,  like the love they held at one time is gone and all they have are memories.  Am I being ridiculous?

My own house is over a hundred years old with such a unique story but there's no point in pictures because from the outside,  it just looks like any other house.  The garage is pretty neat though,  the inside is built in so many stages and you can see where the original structure is and what they added.  It had a Concord grape growing up the back side of it when we moved in.  I didn't know what it was and kept cutting it back to the ground so it wouldn't lift the shingles.  When I discovered it was a grape vine,  I was horrified and let it grow.  It's forgiven me because I get gobs of grapes every year now!

Gina, I know what you mean....sad but still useful as examples of simple living and construction.

I love the adobe Nathaniel posted...almost an art piece and will leave no trace at the end of it's life.

and Burra's detail of a door latch and buildings, so much beautiful stone.

I think as John mentions they tell a story even as they decompose and unlike so many modern buildings not much is left in the end...although the tin on most of those I posted will out last a lot of materials.

Here's a cabin in the National Park here that is preserved with minimum repair....it is such a lovely design and the fence is a favorite of mine.

Your grape vine is such a lucky find...and living in a home with such a long history!

Judith, that fence is lethal looking!  We found a fence exactly like it at the back property line when we went to clear it to build goat fences. It was easily 500 feet behind the house with nothing else around (like maybe there had been another house way back there?) It was overgrown with blackberries and almost entirely disintegrated but you could still tell it was a picket fence.  If only they could talk...

Hi Gina,

It always bothers me when I see a classic old barn collapsing.   There is a gentleman who lives about a mile from me. He is well into his 80s.  He has such a barn in his property 25 years ago. He paid to have the roof replaced. Then board by board he re-sided it. It took him over 10 years to complete the work … a few hours a week, but it currently stands in excellent condition.

the rouge national park has been buying farms to add to the park and so many houses sit empty
i have been taking pics of the stonemasonry on some of them and i have one to share and a drive by pic of a barn falling apart
i have some pics of stonemasonry in structures which are still used which might be better in another thread ?
i also have lots of pics of old delapitated buildings but on another hard drive and would require some digging to find

M. Phelps wrote:the rouge national park has been buying farms to add to the park and so many houses sit empty
i have been taking pics of the stonemasonry on some of them and i have one to share and a drive by pic of a barn falling apart
i have some pics of stonemasonry in structures which are still used which might be better in another thread ?
i also have lots of pics of old dilapidated buildings but on another hard drive and would require some digging to find

I love the stone work on that building and the photo of the distant barn.

Yes please! to more of your old dilapidated building photos!

and I think a thread dedicated to stone masonry examples of structures in use would be a great stand alone topic.

LiThis is an abandoned silo with tree growing through the top.

When we bought our new place, we would drive past this abandoned house next door. Which had 'for sale' painted on the front, and the owner's phone number.



Rather a fascinating stone structure, and close enough to our place that we didn't want to risk anyone we didn't like buying it. To cut a long story short, it is now my son's home!

I thought some of the early photos we took of it would fit in well in this thread.



It was obviously built in stages, with different materials used at each stage. Possibly a generation apart each time?



Pennywort, moss and lichen growing on some of the stones in the walls.



From the other side, it's even more obvious that the lower part was built first, then the upper part with larger and better cut rocks, then a brick and block built afterthought at the back.

The front bit, holding up the balcony, is also a bit of a mystery. It looks like it was part of something larger that once extended further forward.



The door to the lower part of the house. I think this was originally a house, but since the top bit was added it's only been used for animals or storage.



It's not really visible in the photo, but there's an animal feeding trough running all along the back wall. No proper floor. And just junk, and a pair of ladders.



The wood in the ceiling looks a bit suspect, though that main bean is rather fascinating.



Rather a nice little balcony. I wonder how sound it is...



There appears to be rebar visible through the gaps in the concrete holding it up...



And this is the back extension. Made out of a hotch-potch of cement blocks and brick, not very well laid, not in very straight lines, and not going straight up in some places.

It also has much older tiles than the rest of the roof. I suspect the main bit of the house has had a new roof at some point and the older tiles were used on the extension.



Let's have a look inside the back bit. It's split into two rooms, which I think have been added separately. I suspect the far one was originally a pig pen or chicken run which then had an extension added, then got the walls built right up and a roof added.



There are three giant steps up into the top part of the house. Rock for scale, though the steps are so big they make him look rather small.



This is the little room at the back, after we'd cleaned the junk out. That far corner is all sooty and had a heap of ashes and cinders. I'd been told that old houses just burned in the corner of the rooms and the smoke escaped via gaps between the roof tiles.  This seems to confirm!



The main room upstairs. Complete with bed and cupboards. The floor was dodgy enough that we did not step on it until we'd laid boards over, and even then we were careful.



That wall had been rendered once upon a time!



The rendering was loose and had lifted enough for potter wasps to make their nests behind it.



Rather fascinating, but I think they're going to have to go I'm afraid...



We had to rip the old floor and beams out. I think they're past the point of attempting to salvage them!



This was the view from the top of those giant steps after we ripped the floor out and had started to replace the beams.



To our utter delight, that ancient old (chestnut?) beam was still sound, so we kept it.



As soon as the new floor was laid, my son wanted to move in, so he loaded up the wheelbarrow and off he went...



... and called it home.

We've done a lot more work since then, including a new roof, but there is still plenty to do to keep him busy for a while.



And this is the view from the balcony.



Although the structure isn't uninhabited any more, I think the photos still add to this thread. And might help give a bit of a happy ending to everyone who felt a bit sad seeing other structures gradually return to the earth.

Such a cool house! Looks to me like the lower upper sections were both original; many Europeans used to keep the animals below. In the winter their heat helped warm the house above.

Nathanael Szobody wrote:many Europeans used to keep the animals below. In the winter their heat helped warm the house above.

Oh absolutely! The new-fangled brick built house we are in now was like that - downstairs was full of animal keeping stuff and decades-old goat bedding, while the stairs to the upper part were on the outside of the house and all the domestic stuff happened up here. Our old stone-built farm was like that too. The original stone-built one here though was just single story, as per the photo below.

Looks to me like the lower upper sections were both original;  

Well they're certainly both stone, but they look to me like they were built out of different batches of stone.



I drew a line in to show where I think the original went up to. It seems to me that the lower part is the same stone and construction type as our original house here. I believe the two properties were owned by the same family at some point, so it's possibly the same builder, or at least taught by the same person, using stone gathered from the area with a few larger pieces like lintels and jambs cut from the local mountain, likely whilst making terraces.



But then above that line the stones used are bigger, with cut faces. My guess is that as the terraces were being cut into the mountain above, some of the better bits of stone were used to build the second layer on the house, leaving the rest for constructing the terrace walls. As far as I can tell they cut as high up as they can to create a level-ish bit of land then use the stone to construct a wall a little bit lower down the slope. Our top terrace is just cut into the mountain at the back with lovely old stonework as it drops to the terrace below.

This photo shows Austin examining a young tree growing near the back of our top terrace, showing where the terrace has been cut into the soft rock of the mountain.



And this photo, taken from lower down the mountain, shows him standing right at the front of our top terrace above the wall made from the rock they cut out.



My feeling is that if the upper and lower parts of my son's house were built at the same time, the larger, square-cut stones would have been used at the bottom, not the top.

You're probably right Burra. So the lower original structure was quite a little hovel at some point!

I think so.

The way I'm imagining it was that a young family moved onto the land, built themselves their very own home with their very own hands, then over the years, maybe generations, they started to construct the terraces. Then the family grew and one of the offspring got married and built a near identical 'hovel' that is the original house here. Then as they developed more skills at cutting stone they built the house up. Then around 80 years ago another generation decided to upgrade and built the brick house we now live in, in the traditional style of animals-at-the-bottom people-on-top.

People still live in these conditions here, especially older folk who have always lived in these old houses and have no desire to live anywhere else.

This is a photo taken four years ago of a member of the national guard delivering christmas supplies to an elderly gentleman in a house very similar to what others might call a hovel.



There's something so incredibly Portuguese about this photo.

From the policeman with a gun and the prettily wrapped pressies, to the totally unmodernised house with the guy inside who looks quite happy to live his life out there thankyou very much, to the huge stash of orange peels on the doorstep that have been collecting over the last few weeks since the oranges have ripened.

Also that nail above the door with the blue baling twine. I guess that's where the chickens get hung before they're brought inside to go in the pot...

i have not gone through the old hard drive yet and not sure if these photos are a good fit....
this building is now completely restored and is now office space
it was the crematorium of the old hospital in peterborough ontario
it was in an abandoned state for a long time (other than pigeons)
it had leaks in the roof which over time let to stalactites hanging from the ceiling
it even had tunnels which led to the hospital and another building nearby which i explored

the house on the water is abandoned and i have pictures from walking through but they are on the other hard drive

i copied the preview images and it made the file size bigger than necessary so next time i will copy the images themselves as i did not make note of the file names this time

Burra, your posts always tell such wonderful stories!

a corncrib.