The thing with fables is they don’t have to be true to teach you a lesson.
Hence you know exactly which house, the story behind it and the lesson in hubris it teaches.
Also the likelihood there wasn’t an offer made on the farm given where it is is very slim, (if for no other reason than the inconvenience of working around it). That the geology was enough to make it not worth pushing is more likely. – there is a long and costly appeals process for cpos, they’re likely but they’re not guaranteed once granted Eg shepherds bush.
Add to that the motorway is pilled over huge stretches and faced significant geological challenge already.
Any geological issue would have needed to be known prior so any sort of survey which need digging under the house (bear in mind GPR doesn’t really take off until apollo 17 years after the motorway there is built).
The issue is very localised.
The issue happens to be precisely under the farm house of someone who didn’t want to move (who still lived there until their death iirc and the farm is now tenanted).
Whatever the issue is isn’t enough to have caused the house to encounter significant structural issues resulting in it being pulled down despite 60 years of motorway traffic rumbling past and remarkably close to an 18th century building built on top of a geological issue sufficient to make it incapable of supporting that same traffic.
The motorway was routed, either side of their farm, no offer was made to buy it and they just shrugged and got on with life.
Don’t get me wrong, that there is a problem there? Yes highly likely.
That it would have been known about in advance and enough to initially route the motor way around the house? I’m personally a bit sceptical.
That it ticks all the boxes it does purely by coincidence? I’m very sceptical.
On the other hand that a negotiated and mutually acceptable solution (always preferred to issuing a cpo) was found that contains some truth – in differing degrees – from both?Personally I think that’s more likely.
