TrevorWatts
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Aldercar Hall
replied on: 7/22/2004 10:12:23 PM
I have the following recollections of Aldercar Hall: In the 1950s, it was the home of a middle-aged schoolteacher colleague of my father, and I visited it. This eccentric lady (whose name now escapes me) had purchased it after the Second World War and lived there alone. It had 84 rooms, most of which were uninhabitable; thieves had stripped the lead from the roof and so the rain could enter. Anyone brave enough to cross the ballroom floor would probably have fallen through the rotten boards. She kept chickens in the upper rooms and lived in a couple of rooms on the ground floor. She had a large collection of oil paintings, one of them suspected to be a Rembrandt, propped up in the entrance hall and slowly deteriorating. The National Coal Board wanted to purchase the building so that they could pull it down and mine the coal beneath it, but she wouldn't sell.
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