A while ago I featured one of the more creative examples of the estate agents' art of describing properties for sale in euphemistic terms. It was an inaccessible house in the middle of a wood that used to be a sand quarry just a mile across the suburbs from Schloss Drew. The agent termed it "Charming Home in Very Secluded Location. Extremely Leafy Outlooks".
Well, now the same agent has another property to shift, this time even closer to the Drew residence; and the circumstances are not dissimilar as you can see from a pic I took myself. The vocab they've reached for looks awfully similar, too.
Unique Secluded Location With Leafy Outlooks ... Large Rear Garden With Leafy Backdrop
One hopes prospective buyers will do their own DD, because 'leafy' is not the only aspect of the backdrop. This place is in another wood that used to be a sand quarry, where the enterprising local youth have created an elaborate BMX bike course with some fairly stiff obstacles and jumps. When, several decades ago, I was a local councillor, this was in my patch: and the warmest applause I ever received at a public meeting was when I vowed I would ensure the Council would put a stop to the BMX-ers here. Revisiting the site of my political triumph this week, I discovered to my amazement that, not only has the Council evidently given up the struggle now, they've even conferred an ironic blessing upon the victors by erecting a sign eschewing all responsibility for maintaining the private-enterprise course, so that anyone using it does so at their own risk!
A little deeper into the wood there is, I find, a quite enormous tree house built of railway sleepers and huge steel bolts. By whom? I must try to find out. It's of a construction that had me looking all around for signs of zipwires etc, but I could find none. Again, every indication this is an entirely freelance venture - no Council 'elf-n-safety officer would dare to be seen anywhere near it.
"Unique location" and "leafy" it may indeed be - but I'm less sure about secluded ... Anyone got other nice examples of the estate agents' art?
ND
9 comments:
Pics of the BMX track for those interested
https://croydoncentralparks.wordpress.com/2022/01/01/foxes-wood/
excellent - thanks, anon: saved me another sortie with the camera
nothing there about the tree house, though - my inquiries must continue
Who owns this wood?
Council
In '89 we sold our car "would suit welder".
In '15 we sold another "would suit mechanic".
(The car in between was stolen.)
Didn't there used to be a London estate agent who used frank descriptions?
Near me there is a chap who has been living in his shed on the allotments. The council turns a blind eye. I guess they would have to re-home him otherwise.
M.
When I was first a councillor, there was in my (Croydon) ward a field full of smallholdings: the tenants lived on site. Some of their homes were little more than garden sheds. Gloriously, one was an old railway carriage
(Wates bought it all out, to nobody's surprise)
these cottages-in-the-woods that the estate agents are trying to sell, are in a different part of the ward and are the last remnants of semi-rural pre WW1 life in these parts. The Little Boxes On The Hillside don't have quite, errr, the same character
Near us, on the banks of a river (but down a very long and narrow lane) is a lovely old pub, but also, buried in trees, half a dozen ancient "chalets" of the sort my uncle had by the sea in post-war Gower. Pretty sure most of them are inhabited full time. One of those nice old Larkinesque survivals.
"Anonymous Anonymous said...
Near us, on the banks of a river (but down a very long and narrow lane) is a lovely old pub, but also, buried in trees, half a dozen ancient "chalets" of the sort my uncle had by the sea in post-war Gower. Pretty sure most of them are inhabited full time. One of those nice old Larkinesque survivals.
4:11 pm"
Haven't been down that way for some 30 years, but back then, there were tiny chalets off one corner of Three Cliffs Bay, some of which looked to be permanently live in. Water from a spring not far off, I recall...
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