The house was a modernist dream in glass and concrete. It stood out from the grey, Victorian seaside villas that made up most of the houses in the Irish coastal town. The locals called it the House of Escher.
The house had been built in the 1960s for some bright, young thing from England. They had wanted their house to make a statement - and it did! It was the talk of the town, as were the people who gathered there. Artists and socialites came to party and enjoy the views across the bay. It was not uncommon for the townsfolk to catch a glimpse of some actor or author through the plate-glass windows of the house or on its great verandah. At night the house would be lit up, and the sound of music could be heard along the coast path below.
Time passed, and the hedonism of the '60s and '70s was replaced by the harsh realities of the '80s. A car bomb was set off in the centre of the town by one of the many paramilitary groups that had come into being. The detonation destroyed the vehicle carrying the bomb - its engine block was found in an allotment nearly half a mile from the scene - and left a great crater in the road. Nearby shop fronts were demolished, while house further away lost windows and had roof tiles dislodged.
The buildings near the House of Escher had been built to withstand the great storms that blew down the Irish sea. The House of Escher had not. Its structure was permanently altered by the force of the blast, and none of the attempted repairs seemed to work. Eventually the owner of the property washed their hands of it and put it up for sale.
Agents' signs were put up around the building and a buyer sought. Nobody wanted it. The house was too cold, too expensive, too unfashionable. It stood empty for years, subject to the injuries of time and weather, and the insults of the gangs who invaded the property for their drunken revels. Slowly, inevitably, the house fell into disrepair and then ruin.
At last, in the early 2000s, a buyer was found - but for the land the house stood on. A change in fortune had come to the town; people wanted to live there, but there were not enough houses to meet the demand. Someone had worked out that they could build four smaller dwellings in the space taken up by the House of Escher, and the decision was made to demolish it.
Within a week, the bulldozers went to work. The House of Escher was no more.
