Squatters House - Bedford - March 2013

Spotted this when returning from a recce and decided to check it out, No history on it but I imagine it was quite a nice place once but not anymore. It looked like squatters had been living there or junkies due to the drug paraphernalia and alcohol lying around plus the use of most rooms as a toilet made walking around a very dicey experience as it was pitch black in there and my torch was none to bright !

On with the photos then and thanks for looking...

Shame, looks like it was a nice house back in its day. Great photos as usual.

Cracking pics! Looks a good mooch that one

sonyes said:

Cracking pics! Looks a good mooch that one

Click to expand...

great pics pal

This is well mangled... mint stair carpet tho'

Cheers for posting 'em.

Interesting and messy place, great photos of the chaos thanks for putting em up

Nice one Steve, that fire place thing is an odd one!

darbians said:

Nice one Steve, that fire place thing is an odd one!

Click to expand...

Yeah that did look odd Scott

Grim, must have been lovely back in the day.

Your a braver man than me!I avoid places like that,great photos.

nice set when I checked this place out the was human cr** all over the ground floor and I decided it was not going to get any better if I went further in...

I popped in here just before Christmas-your pics make it look good! It was proper trashed!! Good stuff

Priority 7 said:

nice set when I checked this place out the was human cr** all over the ground floor and I decided it was not going to get any better if I went further in...

Click to expand...

Trust me P7 it got a lot worse upstairs !

that's wootton village, 5 miles outside bedford, i used to live there [not in the squat!].

Shame its such a mess and there is poo everywhere, bet it stinks pot Great pics though

Nicely Done and lovely pics Thanks, just a thought, am I the only one who has actually put his foot in it when nosing around a squat?

smiler said:

Nicely Done and lovely pics Thanks, just a thought, am I the only one who has actually put his foot in it when nosing around a squat?

Click to expand...

Maybe but depends what you put your foot in !! This one looked deserted now, or they had gone out !

Great report, great pics. this report led me to join the site and want to get involved.... Because of the blocked off lay-by running beside this place I have been going there for a while to skate.

Did some research into the property first spoke to the council, took them a week to give me the property name and owners surname, fools. It took me 2 hours on the internet to find the property name, owners name and current residence, including details of another property he owns (it was in the news because he was such a crap landlord his tennants ran up an £18000 debt to him and had a garden full of stolen tvs rotting into the environment) and his family and a company he used to be director of (OBX UK Ltd) which dissolved through insolvency the year he became director.

But i doubt any of you care about the waste of space owner who can't look after his own, so here is what I know about the property:

Brickmakers Arms Beerhouse: Woburn Road, Kempston Hardwick
This public house lay just inside the modern parish boundary of Stewartby. Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service does not have much in the way of records for the Brickmakers Arms. It was a Charles Wells house which began life as a beerhouse before becoming fully licensed on 1 Mar 1951.
In 1927 Bedfordshire was valued under the Rating Valuation Act 1925; every piece of land and building was valued to determine the rates to be paid on it. The valuer discovered the accommodation consisted of a sitting room, parlour (or tap room), kitchen and cellar downstairs with 3 bedrooms above and outside an earth closet, barn ["big"], stable for two horses, scullery and two "little stores". Trade was not brisk at only one barrel and a dozen bottles of beer per week. The beerhouse stood in 2.613 acres. The valuer was not impressed, noting: "Miserable situation & house no cottages &c. near".
The public house closed in the 1990s and became a private house, it lay at the end of a long lay-by on the busy A421 (Woburn Road) until the relief road was built and opened in the winter of 2010 when the road became considerably less busy. In 2004 the property was purchased by a Mr Pravin Sisangia and his wife Ranjna. The property has lay derelict since. At some point in the last decade Bedfordshire council boarded up all entrances to the house in an attempt to dissuade the crime it was attracting, and closed the lay-by off with concrete bollards, presumably due to the high levels of fly-tipping, fly posting and littering.
After speaking to some locals about its previous use, there seem to be two common answers. Either it was an auto-breakers yard, or it was a slaughter house... or both. But since it only closed as a pub in the 90's I am tempted to say only one of those is likely to be true.

Any body interested in going to check the place out is welcome to give me a shout, I enjoy going there, I am very tempted to just start doing it up and squatting there, see how long I last.

Good shoot (no pun intended)! Looks like it was a nice pad back in the day. Never ceases to amaze me how houses like this end up so trashed...

Ha ha, been past this, what a state! Cheers for sharing tho!