Thank you, the article was fascinating.
I remember hearing years ago (perhaps 20) that the last member of some wealth British family died, leaving the manor house to the government.
When the house was entered, it was discovered to be stuffed full of junk. Apparently over the centuries, the family horded everything. The would fill entire rooms with junk, and then seal the room.
I had heard that the government was going to document all of what was in the house, and then open it up to the public. Several times when visiting England, I asked members of the National Trust if they knew about the manor, and when it may be open to the public.
While only a few had ever heard about it, none knew when it would be open to the public. Has anyone else heard about this place?
I saw a few pics from the wikipedia, pretty bad..... People who are pack rats are very hard to deal with. One place I worked at back in 1996, the lead person had the Sun “Pizza Box” computer (Sparc 20) and being a sys admin, I had to replace his hard drives a few times because of the lack of airflow and overheating. After the 2nd hard drive replacement I told him that he needed to make room around the machine. He had stuff piled on his desk 3 feet high and there was no desk surface seen. In addition, there was stuff piled up on the floor as well. Also I was the lab manager as well and there was so much stuff in the lab that we didn’t need and he refused to sign the paperwork to get rid of it. I had to get authorization from the property manager which he was happy to give and I was able to get rid of a lot of junk. We had boxes for outdated software from 1987. After I got rid of the items, there were clean table tops to get some actual work done and people enjoyed coming into the lab because of the cleanliness. Since the lab fell under US gov’t rules concerning property, you were permitted enough items to get the job done and no more. Part of my job was to enforce that rule.
A neighbor of a fellow I know died in much the same way - quietly, having fallen asleep in front of the TV. Since she was very reclusive, bitterly estranged from her family, and kept her place very carefully buttoned up for the cooler weather, it was about three months before anyone noticed she’d died. Her dessicated corpse was a withered husk when the police officer brought it out, carrying the bag with one hand.
Very sad.