Family Day Out

[poliphilo]

Here are Mike and Su Young- my son and daughter-in-law. The house they're standing in front of (where they're staying until they get to move to a place of their own) belongs to the Methodist Church (long story).  It's a modest 1930s semi with a tiny garden but because it's in London and within walking distance of a tube station it's worth nearly a million pounds. The London housing market is mad, mad, mad.

We had lunch in a pub then had a wander through Trent Park. You wouldn't think this was London, would you?



At the heart of the park is a big house, Trent Park, built by Sir Philip Sassoon- the poet's brother- in the 1920s. He entertained the literati and glitterati there. During the war it was used as a POW camp for German officers and most recently served as a university. Now it's empty, awaiting the next transformation.



Also in Trent Park is an animal sanctuary. They have Shetland ponies, blind hedgehogs a fallow deer that was born in the local cemetery and thinks its human and a heron that someone hit with a broom when it tried to raid a suburban fishpond.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I dread to think what the two bed flat in North Acton that we once owned is now worth!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's ridiculous, isn't it!

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Big City properties are absurdly expensive. That's why they're all rentals now...nobody can buy them! I had to look up where Trent Park was located...north London but not really London though being inside the boundaries of the M-25 make it so.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of it before- but it's a substantial tract of land.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Not that housing prices anywhere in the South are particularly sane. Why should someone have to be lumbered with a mortgage lasting most of their working life, simply for somewhere to live? Why is this rampant inflation always welcomed with open arms by so-called "conservative" rags like the Flail?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't get it. We've stopped thinking of houses as homes and started using them as trading counters. I think it's anti-human.

[charliemc.livejournal.com]

The cost of buying homes everywhere is ridiculous. I think how my parents' generation all thought everyone would buy a house, but that's far from true now. It's sad, really.

Beautiful photos. Nice to see your son and daughter-in-law.

[charliemc.livejournal.com]

My icons appear to be strangely mixed up. No idea where that one popped in from!