Ruined Manor and stables

Infraredd said:

That is a beautiful ruin

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Dirus_Strictus said:

This house was one of a fairly large number, where the pre-war residents/owners complained to the then War Ministry about the state they found the interior in when the building was returned to them. Don't know the extent of the damage here, but in other well documented cases the wartime residents pulled up wooden floors and removed wooden panelling to use as fire wood. Roof was removed in 1960 to remove the liability for Rates and any other duties that might be owing on a habitable residence.

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tumble1;286426 I did come across one mention of the wartime inhabitants leaving the building in such a state that the family refused to live here after the wars. I had never heard of this before but it appears to have been a relatively common occurence.[/QUOTE said:

Very common, especially where the country mansions and grounds were used to house whole Units/Companies of a Regiment. Where the building was used as a Regimental HQ and housed offices and radio command post etc, any damage reported when ownership was returned to civilians seems to have been minimal at worst. i.e. floors marked by army boots or the odd broken wall mirror or damaged mural/painting. However houses used by allied troops who escaped prior or during Dunkirk and property used by our allies during the build up to D-Day really suffered. In some respects one can understand the wholesale cutting down of ornamental trees and chopping up floor boards and wooden wall panelling for fire wood in the period after Dunkirk, the whole country was in turmoil. ( My mother used to tell of seeing whole lines of bedraggled French Troops, some colonial, trudging along the top of our road in Doncaster on their way from the Station to temporary accommodation on the Race Course. She never could forget the look of sheer helplessness on many of the faces). The damage to properties used to house the build up for D-Day seems harder to reconcile - but then these were young men, an ocean away from their home countries and doing something that people of my generation have never been forced to do. So I am in no position to judge.

In the broad scheme of things, the loss of a bit of wainscotting or a latrine being dug in the rose terrace (I kid not) of a house, was nothing compared to the horrors that went on in occupied Europe. At least these people had property and land to come back to. Many of the books written about the country mansions of the UK over recent years do sometimes mention the wartime histories and what happened to the fabric.

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