I wasn't going to bother putting up a report anywhere on this, as we got caught by the farmer and he's pretty fed up with people going onto his land to photograph it, he actually asked us not to post the images on the net anywhere. To be fair I can understand as it must be quite exasperating for him to keep telling trespassers to bugger off, and he is after all only going about his business. So not wanting to encourage too many visits, I'll stick it in private so it doesn't really count. 
If anyone does go seeking this out, don't park outside the gate with the big 'private land keep off' sign. School boy error, it's pretty obvious why you're there. Go park a distance away and walk to it.
The history is borrowed from another report on another forum, as there's really not much info out there about it.
Colin Stokes was a local eccentric artist who began building a barn for his sheep in the 1980s. It started out as a single storey shed, but within a decade it had spread upwards and outwards into a hocus-pocus tangle of towers, turrets and arches. It was originally small enough not to need planning permission, but the council eventually told him he had to stop. However by this point he had hidden it from them for ten years, and it had grown so massive it's basically as large as a house. This was in the 1990s. Colin moved to Scotland soon after, and since then, the "shed" (if you can call it that, it's certainly the best shed I've ever seen!) has been left empty and open to all weathers. But it's remote location, and the fact that Colin put a lot of effort into making sure it was built to last means it is unusually intact.
It really is an intriguing little place.
I only got a couple of quite poor exteriors as I was meaning to take some more on the way back, but of course we got seen before that happened.
This one has a Frosty in it for scale. As you can see, this part is approximately 1 1/2 frosty's high.
And some of the stained glass is beautiful.
It's amazing that this survives in the middle of the countryside like this, was very surreal.
Thanks for looking,
Mike.
If anyone does go seeking this out, don't park outside the gate with the big 'private land keep off' sign. School boy error, it's pretty obvious why you're there. Go park a distance away and walk to it.
The history is borrowed from another report on another forum, as there's really not much info out there about it.
Colin Stokes was a local eccentric artist who began building a barn for his sheep in the 1980s. It started out as a single storey shed, but within a decade it had spread upwards and outwards into a hocus-pocus tangle of towers, turrets and arches. It was originally small enough not to need planning permission, but the council eventually told him he had to stop. However by this point he had hidden it from them for ten years, and it had grown so massive it's basically as large as a house. This was in the 1990s. Colin moved to Scotland soon after, and since then, the "shed" (if you can call it that, it's certainly the best shed I've ever seen!) has been left empty and open to all weathers. But it's remote location, and the fact that Colin put a lot of effort into making sure it was built to last means it is unusually intact.
It really is an intriguing little place.
I only got a couple of quite poor exteriors as I was meaning to take some more on the way back, but of course we got seen before that happened.
This one has a Frosty in it for scale. As you can see, this part is approximately 1 1/2 frosty's high.
And some of the stained glass is beautiful.
It's amazing that this survives in the middle of the countryside like this, was very surreal.
Thanks for looking,
Mike.
