I’m in the process of sorting through my huge list of properties and will make these available. It’s the second button down. I will add to it as I sort through them..

These places have huge potential..if you’re the person who can make a dream come true, then best of luck to you…

If you are interested in finding abandoned property this site will guide you through the entire process, almost all of it by using online maps and a multitude of other resources. Work your way though the pages to see how to do this.

And if you find it hard to believe that they do actually exist, here is a screenshot of my Google Maps page where I Mark anything of interest. You can work out for yourselves if this process works, just by looking at that picture.

And in case anyone is wondering how hard this is, I’ve now taken to looking at the map, choosing an area I haven’t really covered before, and then homing in to explore more closely. And every time I do this, I always add something to the list, and finding 10 – 12 places of interest over a couple of hours is very commonplace. They really are out there…

This is the page. Every green dot on the page is a marker I’ve placed when I find something of interest. There are actually so many that as I zoom closer to an area, they start to separate out to show the individual markers. At the time of writing this, there must be somewhere in the region of a few thousand of these(I’ve just checked, 2700). I’m including this as it gives a sense of the scale of what I’ve found over time. 

Update 18/02/2025

I sat in my local library yesterday using their computers…as I often do..they’re fast and give me free access to ancestry to search, and yet again I’m doing background research on another property I found recently, but then found I had about ten minutes before I was timed out. 

So I used the time to do what I often do, pick a random spot where I have very few markers, and start to search. There are usually two simple reasons why certain areas are sparse…the first is that the’re so remote and mountainous that there is literally nothing there, the other is that I just haven’t searched it yet.

And the result…In about 10 minutes, I managed to find a total of 11 properties that were of interest. I thought I’d include them here as they give you an idea of what exactly I do end up finding, the reasons they drew my attention, and what exactly I’m looking at. 

I’m just dropping the pictures in at the moment, I’ll give each a brief written description later

Oh, and I’ll briefly mention that, yes it’s obvious that some of these properties are in no way derelict, and probably not even abandoned, but I’ll outline my reasons why they’re here when I add the descriptions

This is one of the reasons why I always scan over small isolated blocks of apparent woodland…they often conceal a building. I noticed years ago that small regular blocks of woodland in these areas exist simply because the cottage they contained became abandoned, ruinous, and because they then didn’t have an actual owner, but often had boundaries from neighbouring fields and therefore livestock, so they simply resorted back to small woods over time. There are thousands of these. It’s hard to imagine the scale on which these areas were abandoned in the past as incomes and subsistence farming failed. 

I would note that there is clearly the remains of a roof here. 

The way these become apparent is noticing something that has a uniform shape, and straight lines. Straight lines don’t exist in nature…it’s always something man made.

I don’t know what this is, it could be a cottage or barn. The 1905 map will tell me.

Yet another isolated cottage. Certainly not derelict as many are, but in what appears to be very good condition, probably having been restored fully at some point. However, look at the access and the immediate surrounds of the building. There is no evidence of regular activity at this location suggesting it has possibly fallen out of use. I say possibly as the nature of some of these properties is that they never get driven up to, and their use is so sporadic that they have no appearance of being in use…despite the fact that they are. The gardens never have any maintenance, there are no paths worn going in and out, but they are still used and treasured by their owners.

Another isolated cottage, this one long abandoned by an indifferent owner. No barns this time, but again, this with a bit of land around is the basis for anything you want, and there is probably enough left to justify an application to rebuild it. This would be marked as a cottage on the 1905 map, would have a name and probably hundreds of years of history of people actually living there.

This is a beauty, clearly a ruin, but very intact and showing a decent sized house with an adjoining barn. Another isolated location and surrounded by farmland…but full of potential. You can tell how intact it is by looking at the gables…you can still see the triangular shape of them

This just appears to be a very common small cluster of small farm buildings, well maintained and probably still used occasionally. The tin roof’s tell you that. However, what this conceals is the fact that this is probably the site of a cottage and half of that larger barn will be a similar sized stone barn. They often simply build a larger barn over them solving the problem of maintenance, and need for more space in one go. The stone barn just sits beneath. There are thousands of these. But because they have had basic maintenance over the years, the walls are still largely intact as would often be any features inside the cottage itself, often including a large inglenook fireplace. And why of interest…well it’s in an interesting isolated location and the owner presumably owns all the surrounding, usually poor quality land. Now imagine it as the basis for a restored cottage or house with a couple of acres

This may confuse some people. Nothing to see here right….well..er..no..!! There is clearly a recently built house at the site, but the one it’s possibly replaced still sits at the top of the yard and has all the tell tale signs of abandonment, the most obvious of which is that there is no clear path to it. In most cases there would be a very visible path from the yard below it. It’s also hard to see if the building below is in use..it’s clearly intact, and appears to have a car parked outside, but this may not prove anything. Further investigation would show if this is a single property, or has been divided in some way, if the new house is a replacement for the old etc. I have seen numerous properties like this where every building is under a different title having been divided off years ago as an owner maximised it’s value and sale price. 

This is a ruin but a very intact one. Look closely at the bottom right, you can see the outline of the chimney in the middle of the gable suggesting an almost completely intact shell. Quite a large building. You can also tell how intact those walls are by the depth of the shadows they cast, and the clear shape of the walls themselves. A collapsing building eventually becomes a pile of stones that only vaguely follows the shape of the original building, and any detail such as chimneys disappear completely. All of that tells you how intact this building is. 

And another fully intact property where you may wonder why the inclusion…but look closely at the tracks passing through. They clearly have to go past these buildings to access other land, but the buildings, particularly the house in the middle have no clear tracks going to them. The fact these are so intact suggests they were probably in use up until a few years ago. One of the ironies of these places is that the barns may continue to be used…farming can make use of lots of kids of space, but it’s the house…for most people the most valuable part…which has no further value to a farmer owner. And these decay first…

The chances are the owner died here, leaving it to a relative who owns a neighbouring farm who now just needs to access the land, but has no use for the buildings. 

I bet when I investigate further the title will have VS (Value Stated) against an almost ridiculously low valuation of the property itself. 

There is a chance this is a modern, fully functional property, but even if it isn’t, it doesn’t look like much would be needed to get it useable again. The curse of the indifferent owner.

A simple shell. Half cottage, half barn. Walls appear largely intact though. I can never understand why the owner, who is almost certainly a local, probably an adjacent farmer, doesn’t do some basic repairs to the walls and stick a tin roof on it. An intact building is much more likely to retain value, and much more likely to get planning permission for some change of use in the future. This pile of stones could be worth £50 – 100K and it may cost him a couple of thousand to protect it. The crazy thing is, doing so would be a legitimate cost and so offset against any tax he may have to pay. I guess having a two year old Japanese pick up is much more important these days.

Just a long building thankfully with a tin roof on it, so it remains intact. However most places like this were holdings at one point. The length of the building being half cottage and half barn. The traditional welsh longhouse. Again, thousands of them. But consider…they all had access of some sort, they were always near a water source and they could all become something again.

This is one of those properties I sometimes consider the potential mother lode. What you have is an intact cottage with about ½ acre of land. Various buildings and evidence of a well used garden at some point, but you can see that everything is now growing up to the buildings. I would use Google Earth to look at historical imagery on this one, and will inevitably find it would have been fully used in 2006 which is the earliest they normally go. This is just under 20 years ago so lots can happen in that time.

And the back story here is probably a very common one. Huge numbers of people move to Wales simply to get way more bang for your buck and a better quality life. The downside is that the majority can only do this when they reach their 50’s – 60’s …i.e. when they have earned, or inherited enough to be able to do this. However this doesn’t actually leave an awful lot of time before health and death kick in. And when you also know that so many people seem to come here to escape the world and actually prefer to end up completely isolated…it’s little wonder properties like this seem to exist. 

Here is an example of my latest explore which I did yesterday, 12th Feb 2025

Explore-1

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