Many once-rich mansions have been left empty all over the world. Broken windows, missing roofs, and crumbling brickwork show how bad the buildings are in. Some have been taken over by people and animals.
5 Mudhouse Road,
One of these once-grand homes used to be near Lancaster, Ohio, on Mudhouse Road. Abraham Kagy and Henry Byler owned the land at first. It was sold to Christian and Eleanor Rugh. About 1875, the building was put up. In 1919, Henry and Martha Hartman bought it again. When Lulu Hartman Mast’s father died in 1930, she got the house as a gift. The Mast family still owns the house to this day.
People in the area think that the house is haunted, as they do with most abandoned homes. Stories about mass murder, killings of children, and other similar things have been common for a long time.
Since the 1930s, no one has lived in the house, and the owners have been very careful to keep it safe, charging anyone who trespasses. Before a fire destroyed the roof and some of the inside, the Mast family’s mansion might have been fixable, but they refused to sell it anyway. They also said it would cost millions of dollars to fix the house up so it could be lived in again and meet building codes. The house only had some electricity and no running water.
The building was torn down in September 2015. People from the area lined the road to see the old mansion being torn down. The demolition company tried to save as much as they could, and the family gave them permission to sell many of the items at amethystandivy.com/mudhouse-mansion.
4 The house at Cambusnethan
Another empty mansion sits sad and alone in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. James Gillespie Graham made the plans for it, and it was finished in 1820. Cambusnethan House, also called Cambusnethan Priory, is a home in the Gothic Revival style. It was built to replace a tower and manor house from the Middle Ages that burned down in 1816.
The first house was surrounded by apple orchards, and a gardener at Cambusnethan House named Mr. Paton is said to have created a new kind of apple called the Cambusnethan Pippin in the mid-1700s.
The building was owned by the Lockhart family, and it was used until 1984, when another fire burned the inside to the ground. The Scottish Civic Trust has put the property on its “At Risk” list, and in March 2014, a group called Friends of Cambusnethan Priory was formed to raise money to save this old building. At www.cambusnethanpriory.com, you can make donations and share memories.
3 Miranda Castle
In 1866, the Liedekerke-De Beaufort family paid for the building of Miranda Castle in Belgium. Edward Milner, an Englishman, was the architect, but he died before the house was finished.
It is said that the building was finished in 1903 by a French architect named Pelchner. During the French Revolution, the Liedekerke-De Beaufort family was forced to leave France and move to Belgium.
The family lived in the house until World War II. During the Battle of the Bulge, they were in the line of fire and had to leave again when the Nazi army took over the building. The National Railway Company of Belgium took over the property in 1950. Until the late 1970s, it was used to house orphans and children who were always sick.
At that time, the house was called “Chateau de Noisy” by the people who lived nearby. Due to how much it cost to keep up, the castle was left alone in 1991. Like the other properties mentioned, it has been broken into and burned down. The city of Celles has said that they would like to buy the property, but the owners have once again refused to sell. In 2013, the family applied for a permit to tear down the building. As of January 2016, however, the abandoned building was still standing, and a petition to save it from being torn down is being shared on www.change.org.
2 The House of the Liu Family in Taiwan
In Taiwan, the Lin Ben Yuan family asked for the Three-Courtyard Mansion to be built in 1929 so that it could be their home. As leaders of the Zhangzhou immigrants, the family used the once-grand house as their base of operations until the 1950s, when the Japanese left Taiwan.
There are many ghost stories about a family servant who killed herself and Japanese Imperial soldiers who lived in the house during the Japanese occupation and were killed in a battle on the property. Nearby trees have started to grow roots and branches around the empty, abandoned mansion, trying to take back the land and turn it back into a jungle. Since explorers have been coming to the area for so long, a smart business owner built the Haunted Café next door to take advantage of the tourist trade. There are no plans to tear down the old mansion, and the people who live there seem happy to have tourists and explorers visit.
1 Tyrone House
The Palladian-style Tyrone House in County Galway, Ireland, was built in 1779 for Christopher St. George, whose family owned a lot of land in Kilcolgan in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was designed by John Roberts of Waterford. At first, the entry hall had a life-size statue of the second Lord St. George made of white marble. The statue was dressed like a Roman emperor and stood under the St. George family crest.
The Tyrone house was a classic example of Irish design. It was surrounded by fruit orchards, rose gardens, grape vineyards, and a safe place for deer. The St. Georges were also horse breeders, and they started the Galway Races. The St. George family left the house in the end, after getting rid of their valuables and giving them to other family members.
By 1912, the manor house was falling apart. During the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s, the Irish Republican Army destroyed the inside of the building so that the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve couldn’t use it as a hospital. There is a story that the elderly caretaker, who was bedridden and couldn’t leave, was taken along with his bedroom furniture and bedding to an outbuilding that was used as an office before the building was set on fire.
In the 1970s, the Irish Georgian Society was interested in the Tyrone House. They tried to buy the estate, but it didn’t work out. In 2004, the Galway City Council decided to buy the building using a law similar to “Eminent Domain.” However, the Irish government has not yet given any money to buy the mansion.
