Old Village Mortuary 66

The Old Village Mortuary as it is 2011

This is an interesting old building in the middle of our village; it is the old village Mortuary . For saying that there would be no more than two hundred people, if they were all rounded up, you could not see what need there was for it.
 But I was told that if there was a death or someone was killed in our area, who did not live in the village, that was where the policeman would take the body and the door locked. As you see in the photograph, it is the door at the top of the steps, in a loft above a cowshed, with a cool north facing window.

On a closer look at the window, it too is a secure one with iron bars across it, there again it was not to prevent escape but to stop invaders (or body snatchers) the window being some ten foot up a blank wall. I have not heard of a small village anywhere else in the country having one in existence, but then I have not travelled.
The door below has regularly used by the publican in recent years as a store room, a small window less lockup as this side of the building is in fact the pub yard. On the other side of the building is a cowshed window and a split door, one where the top half can be left open if need be. The lean-to tiled roof by the brick steps is the "fodder bing" (local name for feed passage) which runs' along in front of the cows where hay and other feed can be stored and pushed through directly into the cows troughs.

Just another quirky little building that will instantly be demolished in the interest of providing another building site. But what about the history to it

Accident, n.: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body better.

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