Just a little report from a similarly little place i stumbled across last summer. Totally by chance i contacted a guy online who was selling some vegetable oil (i run the exploromobile on it!) and arranged to go pick it up when i was over in Suffolk visiting my parents the same weekend. It turned out to be a guy called John Kemp who ran one of the little shops in the picturesque village of Lavenham. One of my family's businesses was also based in Lavenham when i was a kid so i kind of recognised the name of the shop and vaguely remembered it sold stuff like stationary and the like but didn't really think much of it as that wasn't really why i was going. Upon arriving however i instantly took interest when John walked my up the drive and stuck his head in one of the outbuildings to pick something up and it looked completely derelict and unloved. We carried on into the yard at the back and tackled loading up said oil and as we did i got talking to him about his general situation and he explained that the shop had closed and the land was all being sold off for houses. He said he only had a couple of weeks to clear everything out and as people in that situation often do he started offering me seemingly everything he owned at a bargain price (or more often than not for free!) Well anyone who knows me knows i like that kind of situation! Much to my other halfs dismay i started getting the 'full tour' of the whole site and started filling the car up with more than i came for!
At first it was just fairly empty sheds and garages but before long we made it back down to the outbuildings we had stuck our head in earlier. It turned out this was basically a little printers workshop complete with linotype machine and a range of other similar dated equipment. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your outlook 'a man from Canterbury' had beaten me to buying a lot of the cooler (and it has to be said more valuable) items in here but John still spent a good while giving me a full tour explaining what each machine was for and going into some detail about the history of the place, most of which im afraid to say ive completely forgotten now but none the less i did get a chance to snap a few photos on my phone and now the place has been flattened should probably go online for future reference.
Oh and for those of you that attended our little explorer meet up in Dover a few months back this is one of the places the rhubarb came from.. The land at the rear had been allotments and where theres derelict allotments theres usually a metric ton of unwanted rhubarb..
Cheers John, hope you dont mind the photos being online but i cant see it doing any harm now..
At first it was just fairly empty sheds and garages but before long we made it back down to the outbuildings we had stuck our head in earlier. It turned out this was basically a little printers workshop complete with linotype machine and a range of other similar dated equipment. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your outlook 'a man from Canterbury' had beaten me to buying a lot of the cooler (and it has to be said more valuable) items in here but John still spent a good while giving me a full tour explaining what each machine was for and going into some detail about the history of the place, most of which im afraid to say ive completely forgotten now but none the less i did get a chance to snap a few photos on my phone and now the place has been flattened should probably go online for future reference.
Oh and for those of you that attended our little explorer meet up in Dover a few months back this is one of the places the rhubarb came from.. The land at the rear had been allotments and where theres derelict allotments theres usually a metric ton of unwanted rhubarb..
Cheers John, hope you dont mind the photos being online but i cant see it doing any harm now..
