Gaynor Jones's cottage was so ancient, weed-choked and stuffed full of junk, a photographer passing through Aberaeron once mistook it for a ruin, the Telegraph reported.
Jones had been born in the house, which may have been the oldest in this small Welsh seaside town, a neighbor told the British newspaper. She used to live there with her husband, but he died years ago. After that, it was just her and her daughter Valerie Jones — 87 and 50-something, respectively — as brambles grew thick around the stone walls of their home.
From what could be seen through the windows, a neighbor told the Daily Mail, the cottage had no electricity or running water. But it kept filling up with belongings over the years, and in recent months only the daughter had been seen coming out — at least until last week, when police were called to the home to see what had become of Gaynor Jones.
Valerie Jones did little to quell concerns on her rare trips into town, neighbors told reporters. She took no visitors, some said, and rarely spoke to those who said hello.
“She would never go shopping in daylight,” her neighbor John Richards told the Mail. “Only at night, when it was dark.”
“You would see Valerie come in here with her trolley bag from time to time,” gift shop worker Mandi Evans told the outlet. “I always felt that she was an outcast in Aberaeron. A lonely lady without friends. I can't remember the last time l saw her mom, Gaynor.”
On March 12, the BBC reported, police were asked to check on the home. The pair's health had become that much of a concern.
Inside, the Telegraph wrote, officers found Valerie Jones “collapsed under mounds of papers.”
She was severely dehydrated, and taken to a hospital half an hour up the coast.
Her mother was nowhere to be found in the clutter-jammed cottage. No one in town could recall seeing Gaynor in months.
[ A teen reunited with her birth mother — who then killed her and burned her body, police say ]
Officials in masks were seen going into the home. Police set up a forensics tent outside, the BBC reported. Dumpsters appeared on the road, and searchers began to excavate the many articles of furniture and miscellanea that had been inside for so long.
Police spent most of last week digging from one end of the cottage to the other, the Telegraph wrote.
On the fourth day, they found Gaynor Jones's body.
Investigators have not said how long she was dead — whether days, weeks or years. The coroner's office will open an inquest, Sky News reported, but until then her death is classified as “unexplained.”
“What has happened there is all a bit of a mystery,” an unnamed resident told the Telepgraph.
Valerie Jones was still in poor condition, the newspaper wrote. If she has said anything more to police than she had to the residents of Aberaeron all those years, it has not been disclosed by reporters who have now taken an interest in the small town.
As for the cottage — a neighbor told the Daily Mail that some of the brambles were ripped down by the searchers, and that much of the clutter has been hauled away. One occupant is dead, and the other gone, and if you passed by the place now and called it a ruin, you might not be mistaken.
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