The County Bandits

Alright, can we just pretend I haven’t been gone for another 3 years?

I’m unsure how some mysterious time vampire continues to creep into my life and steal entire YEARS from me, but here we are! I was chatting with a fellow abandoned place photographer on Instagram (his handle is @marksoergeldesigns) and it inspired me to try and get some new content up on this blog. I checked out the page for the first time in ages and noticed WordPress advertisements had taken over… oops. I seemed to have let my payment method lapse that was taking care of keeping this page ad-free! I quickly corrected that and now the County Bandits blog has once again been dusted off and will see some fresh content.

This first farmhouse is a throwback to right around the time I moved to Norfolk county. I checked the date on these and was shocked to see May 2017! Had it really been that long?! I was driving down a country road just a couple of kilometers from our home and spotted a glimpse of this brick beauty hiding among thick trees, set far back from the road. I parked at the end of the long lane way and double checked that there was no mailbox to be seen; something which I have always taken to be a good indicator that a home has been empty for some time.

I walked up the long lane and took some photos of this simple Ontario farmhouse with my iPhone, all the while hoping that it was indeed empty! It was in wonderful condition and I was delighted by some of the brick details. I love this style of home and the property is simply gorgeous. When I returned home I googled the address fervently, hoping it would pop up somewhere for sale. No such luck. Could you imagine owning this place? I can envision it restored to pristine condition, with all that overgrown landscaping trimmed back to show off this timeless country home. Maybe one day I’ll get lucky and see a for sale sign out front… one can dream, right?

This second home was the only result from a short, and otherwise fruitless, excursion around my corner of Norfolk County in search of abandoned places. I first saw this empty farmhouse a decade ago when I came to the area for a job interview, strangely enough. Looking back I seem to recall that it showed evidence of a fire, but that could be completely false since it was so long ago. Maybe the burned house was next door? Or close by? Bits of information are sort of filtering back through as I think back on it. The mind does play tricks sometimes, so I am not really sure. From the photos today, I saw no evidence of a fire, but I do see the brick starting to fall off around that first floor window.

Other than the crumbling brick, the home appears to still be quite solid – perhaps thanks to the steel roof? I absolutely love the “quoins” and the nice brick details around the windows on this home. I would have liked to get a better variety of photos of this home, from different angles… but my phone went off and I had to high-tail it out of there and take care of an emergency situation. Next time! I am glad to have at least captured some photos of it today, so it will at least live on in photos if something happened tomorrow. I have regretted not photographing many houses that disappeared into a pile of rubble or ash before I had gotten the chance.

Thanks for reading, even after all these years! I’ll do my best to stick around for a while and hunt up some new abandoned places to share.

~Bandit

This entry was posted on March 9, 2019 at 12:45 am and is filed under Abandoned House, Norfolk County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.