The few occasions that Simon Woodward has been allowed to step through the doors of the property he called ‘home’ for 17 years, has been a painful and miserable experience.
Fumbling in the dark because there’s no electricity, on a strict time limit to grab some belongings and shove them a bag, glancing at the dishes that he piled in the sink one night in May thinking he’d wash them later and which are still lying there, eight months on.
“The contents of the fridge are still there, all melted gunge,” he says.
“I’ve been trying to get my stuff out for months but it’s hard to see what you’re doing in a loft when there are no lights to turn on and no one to help you,” he says.
Simon Woodward's home in Benbuck View, Coalsnaughton is among dozens earmarked for demolition (Image: Contributed)
“And it’s depressing to go back in. You are in a house that is dead.”
On Thursday evening in a packed church hall in Tillicoultry, just along the road from the Coalsnaughton estate where his home and more than 90 others are slowly sinking due to shifting underground mine workings, Simon and dozens of other families heard the news they had been dreading for months.
Separated into groups depending on which streets they lived in, the residents of Benbuck View and Dunmoss View – the streets at the centre of estate and worst affected – learned there would be no happy homecoming.
Instead, to the sounds of women’s sobs, a representative from the Mines Remediation Authority (MRA) explained their houses would be bought from them and turned to rubble.
Simon Woodward and wife Sharon, who have learned their home in Benbuck View, Coalsnaughton, is to be demolished (Image: Contributed)
If there was fine detail explained as to how they would be valued, the timescale, what to expect next, and not to worry that everything would be alright, Simon didn’t hear it.
But he did hear the sharp intake of breath from the devastated young couples and retirees who used to be his neighbours, the women’s sobs, and felt his blood start to boil.
“It was appalling,” he says angrily. “Such a sad meeting.
“Lots of women ran out of the hall crying. There were young girls crying their eyes out.
“There’s one young woman with a one-year-old baby. Her husband left and now her house is sliding down the hill. Imagine that.
