Iranian Embassy

Today I decided to drive 15 minutes away from my house and ended up in Iran. No, I'm not joking. A crumbling mansion owned by the government of Iran sits abandoned within one of the most expensive areas of the outskirts of Manchester. Surrounded by million-pound properties, Brackendene was once a grand site with greenhouses, outbuildings and a swimming pool. Now, the red-brick mansion has a hole for a roof and lies forgotten behind overgrown woodland and security fences.

Brackendene was bought by the Iranians in the 1970s. The consul-general lived there at one stage and it was beautifully maintained, yet the building began to be left empty in the years after Iran's Islamic revolution. Since then, the state of the house has reflected the troubled diplomatic relationship between Iran and the UK, with the mock-Tudor building finally becoming deserted around a decade ago. It wasn't until 2011 that it looked like there might be a breakthrough, with reports saying that Iranian embassy representatives from London had travelled to Trafford to discuss the site's future, but soon after tensions over Iran's nuclear programme erupted into violence. Hundreds of protesters attacked the British embassy in Tehran because of the UK's support of further sanctions. In response, the UK gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.

Since then, any hope of the embassy gaining any kind of maintenance from it's owners has faded away, and with it the inevitable influx of vandalism has taken it's toll. The building has had two major arson attacks which have all but destroyed the roof and most of the upper floors, and anything of value has been scavenged by thieves. The outskirts of the plot are now lined with barbed wire and signs to keep vandals out.

In the past 12 months, Trafford council has taken to strip the land of rubble and debris, and has started to clear this large plot of everything but the shell of the house itself, which can only mean that demolition is soon to be underway. Houses on this stretch of road are known to sell for millions of pounds and this is one of the largest plots of land available. Any chance of an Iranian ambassador setting foot here again is almost entirely gone.