Urban Exploration - The House of Televisions

This is a place found entirely by chance, to say the least. On the way back, my eye was caught by a house in a state of abandonment. The road is so busy and difficult that I only managed to pin it about a kilometer further on—somewhat randomly, in the "to check" category, and so on!

A week later, when my "obligatory route" took me back that way, I went to take a look in the early evening. The road, with its turns, is nothing short of a semi-hell, so I parked the car on a small, peaceful road further up.

All that was left was to cross large pastures to get there. Everything was fine, but—bad luck—the door was locked. I was ready to give up when suddenly, my gaze was caught by the iron grate of an old cow trough on the ground. It could serve as a ladder. As it turned out, using it to climb up and down was remarkably easy.

This house no longer contains any vestiges of the life of yesteryear.

It served as a coaching inn under Henry IV. On this major thoroughfare, carriages would stop here. The horses were sheltered inside the vast barn. Later, it became a residence, with the last occupant leaving in 1977. There was no TV repairman here; it’s simply that the junk had been gathered in one spot.

I walked back up peacefully and was putting away my shoes when a lady approached me with her little boy, Lucas: "Have you been to the house by the roadside?" — "Yes, of course!" She then explained that the neighbors had seen me in the fields and quickly made a phone call. Standard procedure in the countryside. Oh, goodness—I didn't mean to intrude!

This lady and her husband run a farm with meat sheep and 500 beehives. They acquired this house when they bought the farm. When the time comes, they would like to renovate it; however, replacing the barn roof is very complicated given that the work would have to be done from the road, which is quite unthinkable.

These people have had nameless difficulties with the urbex community. While the thefts came from another community altogether, there was mostly breakage involved in trying to enter the building—and not just once. The fed-up farmer finally installed a motion detector, forcing the culprit to own up to their "lovely work."

So that’s the short story of the "Maison Télés" (TV House). From now on, every time we pass by, we’ll be sure to drop in and say hello to that farming family!