Three squatters have been evicted from a college-owned property, which they broke into during the Easter vacation.
A window was smashed, furniture was damaged and rubbish was strewn about the house during the illegal occupation.
One of the students currently living at the house, Sebastian Kaupp-Roberts, made the discovery after passing by and noticing that the front gate had been taken off its hinges. A notice detailing ‘Squatters Rights’ had been placed in one of the windows.
Roberta Klimt, another student resident, described how they realised what was going on.
“Later that night on his way home, Sebastian peeped in at the kitchen window (which can be seen from Walton Street) and saw a man helping himself to my low-calorie hot chocolate supply.
“The porters told us that they’d spoken to the squatters who had said they hadn’t realized the house was a student house, and that they wouldn’t have moved in if they’d known.”
After two days, police and bailiffs evicted the squatters and the students were allowed back into the property. Klimt said, “We had a look around the house. The squatters’ belongings were still lying around because they’d been apprehended without having time to gather their things together. It was at this point that things started to turn out as quite amusing.
“The house was in a pretty big mess. Various bits of furniture had been moved around from room to room inexplicably. They’d pinned up a couple of Page 3 girls on our living-room wall, where pictures of Chairman Mao and Germaine Greer used to be. ”
“The nicest touch was the shopping trolley we found in my friend George’s room, which contained but a single egg” she said.
Although the break-in ended without significant damage, the students were initially concerned for the safety of their possessions.
Another housemate, Marielle Cottee, said, ”I was shocked to hear that squatters had gained access to the house, particularly because we had only left it a few days before and some of my belongings were inside. Once the squatters had got in, they removed the doors from our bedrooms and boarded up the windows to stop anyone else coming in.”
“I was fairly horrified to see the state of the house from the outside” she said.
Miss Cottee explained that the housemates who were in Oxford at the time were allowed back into the house in order to identify what damage had been done and what belongings were their own.
“All of our beds had been slept in, they had broken into our medicine boxes and there were newspaper clippings everywhere about previous squatter escapades” she said.
Thames Valley Police have confirmed that they were called in to assist in the eviction of the three squatters who had taken up residence in the house.
The house, which is owned by Worcester College, has since been cleaned and the college has made improvements to the security of the building. The Domestic Bursar, Steve Dyer, commented, “The squatters were discovered in the house on the 25 March and were removed two days later. ”
“We’ve put extra locks on the windows in the house and the police have advised us that the property should not be left un-occupied for long periods of time.”
Klimt praised the efforts of Worcester College to rectify the situation. She said, “College were very helpful and reassuring to us. We were very happy with how they handled the situation.”
