Even Bedrooms and Toilets aren't safe from Vandals at Esperanto House

EAB President Clare Hunter and Director Tim Owen were at Esperanto House a few weeks ago to clean up after a break-in. Although there was no external sign of a new intrusion something caught their eye: “That Waitrose bag has been moved. It had some paper in it.” The bag was now upside-down and empty, its contents scattered among the other debris in the building.

Clearly somebody had been inside the building since their previous visit but it wasn't clear how: the main office door was locked when they arrived, and the door to the library is boarded over. They had to surmise that the office door hadn't clicked close when they left previously: the door frame is warped following a previous intrusion so perhaps they hadn't pulled the door hard enough when shutting it, although this seemed unlikely.

Tim Owen was on site again recently when something else caught his eye: the door to the boiler house at the side of the building was flapping in the wind. And then all became clear: the lock had been smashed off, and vandals had destroyed the boiler unit:

A look skyward revealed something else: a hole suitably large for a person to pass through. Somebody had entered the top floor of Esperanto House via the ceiling.

A second's glance in the bedroom named after William Auld showed that they'd been in there:

They had smashed the bathroom up:

And had some fun doing the same to the other bedrooms:

This prompted Tim to check the downstairs toilets: one of the “delights” of visits to Esperanto House since May is the lack of electricity or water, so there had been no reason to check the toilets: after all, nobody was going to steal the spare toilet paper. Spoiler: they had! And they'd smashed them up, too:

And that was that. There was nothing worthwhile for them to take: the bookstock and artwork was removed following the initial break-ins in 2022, the library collection and archive are housed elsewhere, and other thieves had already beaten them to the copper in the water pipes:

A thoroughly dispiriting experience, another of an ever increasing number. And without electricity (previous thieves cut the wires), there's sadly no CCTV footage.