Why a stranger left a mysterious note in Georgia and Ollie’s house

When Georgia and Ollie bought a home in England, there was a mysterious piece of paper waiting inside. 

It was 2024, and the young couple had just picked up the keys to their first property together – a semi-detached heritage house in the southeastern county of Surrey. 

As they stepped inside the house on moving day, they spotted a folded card. 

“That card we opened on the day we moved in, and it had this full story written in it,” Georgia shared in a TikTok video yesterday.

The card had been left by the family of the previous owner, an 88-year-old woman who had recently moved to a nursing home. 

It told the extraordinary tale of how the woman came to live in the cottage for over eight decades. 

It shared how, in the 1930s, the property was home to a local Surrey couple who occasionally rented out their spare bedroom to travellers. 

When World War II hit, hundreds of children were evacuated from Battersea in southwest London to protect them from air raids. One of the children arrived at the home. 

“This couple decided to take a child in who was being evacuated from there,” Georgia said, recalling what she read in the card. 

“This is the same child that I bought the house from.”

Georgia said the young girl was just four years old when the Surrey couple took her in. 

“When the war ended, the actual parents of the child didn’t take her back, and I don’t know why,” Georgia said. 

“So she stayed with her adoptive parents for years and years and years.”

The girl would ultimately spend the rest of her life in the cottage. 

When her adopted parents passed away, she inherited the house and raised her own children there. 

Finally, after 84 years in the home, the woman decided to put the home on the market. 

A six-month period of vacancy during the sale process left the house in a “sad” state, but Georgia and Ollie put in an offer anyway. 

“We wrote a letter – we knew it was a family selling a house, so we wanted to make it really special,” Georgia recalled. 

In the letter, they explained they were first home buyers and promised they would take good care of the garden. 

“The letter got handed to [the sellers], they loved it and they gave us the house,” Georgia said. 

Georgia and Ollie purchased the cottage for £400,000 ($802,000). 

Since moving in, they have embarked on a renovation and gardening project that they are documenting on social media.