Selling the house I grew up in.

The house I grew up in is going to fall down unless I sell it. It's a Georgian house, over 200 years old and it's been empty for about 5 years. It's also huge by today's standards, there are probably lots of families living comfortably in apartments that are smaller than the largest room in the house. It was built by the Anglo Irish landlords who basically stole the land from the Irish people and then rented it back to them and lived lavishly while doing it. It was a beautiful house, even as recently as the 1980's it was an attractive house. But now it's a bit like a wealthy, old woman who has fallen on hard times, imagine old Miss. Havisham in Dickens' book Great Expectations. Complete with spiders and dust. My Great grandfather bought it when the Anglo landlords moved back to England just over 100 years ago, after the 1916 rising they could see the writing on the wall. Around here a lot of the 'big' houses were burnt to the ground during the civil war. But ours wasn't touched. Or torched. Because so many of these houses were destroyed, they are now pretty rare, they're also protected or listed buildings. This is a bit of a blessing and a curse for their owners. Any maintenance or renovation work has to be done to heritage standards. This means original style everything, no pvc gutters or windows here. It's also expensive to do this work, properly. It's been empty since my parents moved out about 5 years ago. Some of the windows were broken when kids broke in. I used to keep a heater on during the winter, not anymore though. It's too expensive. Every room bar a couple of smaller ones has a fireplace. Most are blocked up now, my parents installed central heating in half the house in the 1970's. The other half of the house was just used for storage. Whenever a grand aunt or grandparents died their junk moved into our house. Old china plates and mahogany sideboards and narrow beds that nobody really wants anymore. Unless of course they have just bought a big, empty Georgian mansion. I don't know what to do with the old furniture, the contents belong to my mother. She was born during WW2. Like everyone else born at that time, she is a hoarder. You know those de-clutter tv programmes? The ones where the, usually, mentally ill person has a house stacked to the ceiling with 'stuff' with little rabbit runs through the stacks, that sort of hoarder. We spent a week mucking out 35 cubic meters of junk last summer, hard but satisfying work. We didn't tell my mother we were doing it, she would have been skip diving. I still have a lot of work to do outside, cutting back overgrown vegetation, perhaps a few new panes of glass before viewing by prospective buyers can start. Today an auctioneer was out taking photos for a brochure. At least the smell of damp old clothes and mattresses has now mostly gone. I've started to appreciate where the heritage people are coming from. The gloss paint applied to some of the walls is cracked and peeling because the walls can't breathe under the paint. But rooms with the original white wash lime are still in good condition.

Wish me luck with the sale and if you know any wealthy people looking for a big old house in Ireland show them this. Update; July 2023Well the house has been sold, I wish the new owner all the best as they go to work restoring the old lady to her former glory.