19th March 2024
Top 3 abandoned mansions from around the world
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Top 3 abandoned mansions from around the world

Many once opulent mansions were deserted around the world. With broken windows, missing roofs and crumbling brickwork, the buildings are in sad shape. Some have become homes for squatters and animals.

3. Cambusnethan House

In North Lanarkshire, Scotland, another deserted mansion sits forlornly empty. It was designed by James Gillespie Graham and completed in 1820. The Gothic Revival style home, called Cambusnethan House, or Cambusnethan Priory, replaced a Norman-age tower and manor house which had been destroyed by a fire sometime in 1816.

The original home had been surrounded by apple orchards, and it is rumored that a Mr. Paton, a gardener at Cambusnethan House bred a new apple variety called the Cambusnethan Pippin in the mid-1700s.

The owners were the Lockhart family, and the building had been in use until 1984 when another fire gutted the interior. The Scottish Civic Trust has listed the property as “At Risk” and in March of 2014 a group calling themselves Friends of Cambusnethan Priory was established in order to raise funds to save this historic structure.

Cambusnethan Priory.
Cambusnethan Priory.

2. Miranda Castle

Miranda Castle in Belgium was commissioned by the Liedekerke-De Beaufort family in 1866.  The architect was an Englishman named Edward Milner who unfortunately passed away before the home was completed.

Reportedly, a French architect named Pelchner completed the building in 1903. The Liedekerke-De Beaufort family had been forced to flee France during the French Revolution and had settled in Belgium.

The family remained in the home until World War II when the occupants found themselves in the firing line during the Battle of the Bulge and were again forced to flee when Nazi army officials commandeered the building.

In 1950, the National Railway Company of Belgium took over the property to house orphans and chronically sick children until the late 1970s. It was at that time that the house was affectionately dubbed “Château de Noisy” by the locals.

In 1991, the castle was abandoned due to the high cost of maintenance. As with the previous properties mentioned, it has been subject to vandalism and fires. The municipality of Celles has suggested that they are interested in acquiring the property, but again, the owners have refused to sell.

In 2013, the family applied for a permit to demolish the building but as of January 2106 the derelict building was still standing and a petition is being circulated on www.change.org to save it from destruction.

Castle Miranda_Back_Side
Castle Miranda_Back_Side

1. The Tyrone House

The Tyrone House, County Galway, Ireland was designed in the Palladian style by John Roberts of Waterford and built in 1779 for Christopher St. George, whose family owned a large tract of property in Kilcolgan in the 17th and 18th centuries. Originally, the entry hall boasted a life-size white marble statue of the second Lord St. George, dressed in the fashion of a Roman emperor and positioned beneath the St. George family crest.

Surrounded by fruit orchards, rose gardens, grape vineyards, and a deer sanctuary, the Tyrone house signified classical Irish design. The St. Georges also bred horses and were the founders of the Galway Races. Eventually, the St. George family left the home after clearing out the valuables which were distributed among family members.

By 1912, the manor house had already begun to decay.  In the 1920s, during the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Republican Army destroyed the interior to keep it from being used as an infirmary by the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve. There is a story that the elderly caretaker who was bedridden and unable to flee was taken, along with his bedroom furniture and bedding, to an outbuilding used as an office before the building was torched.

In the 1970s, the Tyrone House caught the attention of the Irish Georgian Society, but their attempt at purchasing the estate fell through. In 2004, the Galway City Council decided that the building would be purchased under a mandate similar to Eminent Domain, but the Irish government has yet to offer any funds to purchase the mansion.

Tyrone House
Tyrone House