A ‘fairytale house’, buried under the desert for 40 years, has suddenly emerged from its slumber on a suburban road.
Before it sold at auction last year, the three-bedroom detached property with a 250-yard rear garden was invisible to anyone walking down the road in Gedling, Nottinghamshire.
It was rumored to have been ‘abandoned’ but was actually home to a world famous beekeeper, David Kemp.
He lived in the property from 1974 until shortly before his death in February 2022, turning it into a haven for wildlife.
Occasionally he would emerge from his wild habitat wearing an immaculate suit and often a goatee and set off to inspect bees, give lectures to local groups and even make a radio series about bees for the BBC.
Locals were stunned when a fairytale home belonging to David Kemp appeared behind thick bushes in Gedling, Nottinghamshire
The shrubbery covered the house and has since been cut away, revealing period features in the red brick house.
Before and after photos show how the home was covered in bushes (left) before they were cut away by its new owner (right)
The house was rumored to have been ‘abandoned’ but was actually the home of a world famous beekeeper, David Kemp (pictured)
But for many locals his home, which sold at auction for £455,000, simply didn’t exist.
Dog walker Cheryl Wood, 57, had stopped to take a picture: ‘I’ve been coming down this road for 47 years and don’t ever remember seeing this house. It was just trees and overgrowth.’
Lynda Glover, 71, who lived next door to David for 22 years, said she missed her ‘unique neighbour’.
“He just turned it over to the wildlife,” she said. ‘We set up a camera in our garden to capture it all. It was incredible – foxes raising their young in his broken down shed, deer, badgers and an owl that lived in a big old oak tree and hooted every night.
“Our dog Willow, a Jack Russell cross, would sometimes go through the fence and hang out with the foxes.
‘He was a lovely guy and always very well dressed in a suit. It’s a real shame to see it all go. David would be upset, but it’s inevitable.’
Now the neighbors are unsure of what will happen next.
The last two months have seen dozens of trees felled, the house exposed to the road and lots of rumours.
‘We’ve heard they want to knock it down and build a big house and we’ve heard they’re planning more bungalows. It shouldn’t be because we are on the greenbelt.’
When potential buyers got a look at the property, they found a tree growing out of the attic, a fireplace, stained glass windows, several pairs of old shoes and a copy of the Daily Express from 1983.
An aerial view reveals the drastic work underway to clear the land around the property
The home was almost completely hidden from locals in Gedling before the work
Neighbor Alison Cooper (pictured), 68, described Mr Kemp as a ‘lovely guy’
The garden, now without its shed or its many beehives, remains a mess with honey pots all over the ground and an old barrel of woodpecker cider.
Other neighbors have mixed feelings about what will happen next.
Software engineer Jeff Lofts, 55, said: ‘I didn’t want many houses down there. It has been a wild space and it was nice to have the wildlife so close.’
Craig Howkins, 36, a commercial manager, added: ‘I used to wonder how anyone could live there. It was covered in ivy from head to toe, but when you saw him, he was always very clever.
‘I would see him sitting in his white van with a suit on. He was definitely one of a kind.
“I think it’s good for the area to keep developing. If they are looking to build one of the big design houses, it could add value to the area.’
Another neighbor, aged 80, who asked not to be named, said: ‘He once came to my WI (Women’s Institute) group to give a talk about bees and he came in a bow.
‘He was very well behaved and it was hard to believe he had left that house. You simply couldn’t see it.
‘We once had thousands of bees in our garden and my late husband went to ask him about it and he just said, ‘That’s what they do…they move around’.
Alison Cooper, 68, said: ‘He was a lovely guy, really nice. We had a nest of bees in our front yard once and he came over in his bee suit and smoked them out and put them in his hive.
‘The only downside was that you couldn’t hang out your laundry because his bees would fly over and drop yellow pollen on everything.
‘His front garden had so much holly growing in it that people would stop their cars at Christmas time and pick some.
‘Over the last two months people kept showing up and more would disappear and now we can see into the valley.
An aerial photo shows that the thick bush still covers almost the entire home
Sir. Kemp lived in the property (pictured) from 1974 until shortly before his death in February 2022, turning it into a haven for wildlife
“Nobody knows what they’re going to do with it next.”
Another local, also a housebuilder, said: ‘We’ve been here for 30 years now and it really was like living in a time warp.
‘The bees were quite a problem, especially if you had a white car – they would drop so much poo.
‘David moved out towards the end of his life but his nephew would bring him back to sit in the front garden. He loved it here. He was a unique neighbour.’
David was a regional bee inspector for several decades, initially employed by the Department of Agriculture and was a leading figure in the Nottinghamshire Beekeepers’ Association.
As a young man he spent a decade looking after the bees at Buckfast Abbey, an abbey in Cornwall, before moving back to his native Nottinghamshire.
Author Steve Donohoe, who wrote an obituary for David, said: ‘I spent a lovely afternoon with David in the summer of 2017 at one of his favorite pubs in Kelham, Nottinghamshire.
‘He was an incredible character with an endless supply of stories, laughter and enthusiasm for life and wildlife.’