Trashed: How squatters abused a £3m mansion
THE once-tempting swimming pool lies strewn with debris, graffiti and empty beer bottles, while the formerly stylish vaulted cellar resembles a rubbish tip.
These were the scenes at a £3million mansion yesterday following the eviction of dozens of squatters who had for weeks claimed it as their home.
Fireplaces in the eight-bedroom, fourbathroom property have been vandalised, and marble work-tops stained.
But the squatters, who were thrown out after about 20 police officers stormed the mansion in Clifton, Bristol, insisted yesterday that they were the ones who had been treated disrespectfully.
One even said they were considering legal action against the police for ‘forcing their way into the building’ and turfing out about 35 people after complaints of a noisy party in the early hours of Sunday.
Yesterday, police charged five people: two with public order offences and three with assaulting a police officer.
One of the squatters said more than 30 people spent Sunday night sleeping in the nearby Brandon Hill park, while yesterday several had apparently moved back to a boarded-up squat nearby.
Security guards in high-visibility vests yesterday patrolled the grounds of the mansion, which was repossessed from a previous owner by the Bank of Scotland.