Still life

A house that was abandoned in 1997 and has remained locked up ever since is being sold at auction next month. Tea cups and crockery are still on display on the Welsh dresser, and the cupboards are stocked with rusty tins of food, while clothes, now covered in cobwebs, are still on their hangers. No one in the area knows what happened to the owner of the house near Penzance, Cornwall, but he appears to have left after his wife died. The house was bequeathed to the owner’s son, but no one has lived in it for 20 years.