The roof of a disused house which went up in flames has been destroyed.

A burnt out shell of a building remains of White Ladies house in Offham, which has been unoccupied for more than 10 years.

Once a mink farm, the Teston Road property is now owned by FCC Environment, formally Waste Recycling Group.

But it was abandoned after the landfill site next to the house began producing dangerous levels of methane gas.

According to Offham Parish Council documents, FCC have not used the building since 2006.

Chairman of The Offham Society, Mike Rowe, said: "White Ladies was built in the 1910s and the Nicholson family were the first owners of the house.

"The original name was Quarrenden, an old English apple variety, as it once sat within an orchard.

"When Lieutenant Colonel Walter Adam Nicholson died in the First World War, his wife had to pay death duties. She was left bitter as she was forced to sell the house and move away."

According to Mr Rowe, the name White Ladies came from the ivory fur used for women's coats, when the house became White Ladies mink farm in the 1960s.

But as fur fashion lost popularity, a family - the Chapmans - bought the property and lived there from around 1980.

Later in the decade, the quarry next to the house became a landfill site for metropolitan rubbish.

As the mounds of waste grew and methane levels crept up, the Chapman family moved out and the building was used as offices from 1991, until the air became so unhealthy that it was abandoned in 2006.

White Ladies has laid derelict ever since.

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