The Victorian villa in Cardiff’s Lisvane suburb is buried amongst overgrown hedges An abandoned mansion hidden away in a posh Welsh neighbourhood is being auctioned for £1.26million.
Most people who pass by the address in Cardiff’s Lisvane suburb have no idea behind the overgrown hedges and wild garden is a vintage Victorian villa called Blair Athol which once had its own coach house.
It’s deemed important enough to be included in Coflein, the online catalogue of archaeology, buildings, industrial and maritime heritage in Wales.
And it is now going to auction for a guide price of £1,260,000, reports Wales Online.
The archive site describes the property as being a “large brick mansion with a dressed stone entrance facade and fine Victorian veranda, dating back to the late 19th century and set in its own formal lawns to the front”. It was once a grand villa which looked out over the city and had a coach house.
A photo of the exterior of the home before it was abandoned to ruin shows off its grandeur with a columned ground-floor veranda and balcony above it allowing for views across the city.
The basic infrastructure is still largely intact, albeit the views obscured, but the interior paints a far more tragic picture.
Graffiti on the walls and bordered up stained glass windows suffocate the glamorous urban mansion, while some of its period features, including fire places and a staircase appear to have been replaced. The house is now derelict with bordered up windows and graffiti on the walls.
But what the property does boast is plenty of space, including a number of basement rooms. The garden also stretches three-quarters of an acre. Huw Edwards, head of auctions and auctioneer at Seel & Co, said: “The house itself is an attractive Victorian villa with many original features, though is currently in a poor condition with the grounds particularly to the front of the house overgrown. In May 2015 planning permission was granted for the demolition of the existing house and the construction of two houses and six apartments on the land instead. A cottage at the rear of the site that was converted from the villa’s former coach house has already been flattened. The planning consent has now lapsed and came with a planning obligation under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
