Many of the older farms in this area still used wartime Nissen huts for storage, relying on the fact that they were built to last a long time and took many years before they finally collapsed from age and neglect. But this thing was bigger than any Nissen hut Cooper had ever seen. A hundred feet long at least, with central posts holding up the ridge of the arc high above him. The structure was open to the elements at both ends, but the middle was dry and sheltered.

Inside, he found two tractors parked on a concrete base alongside a pick-up truck. More vehicles stood outside – a lorry fitted with a winch, an old Escort with a pig trailer attached to the tow bar. The equipment stored in here included an interesting yard scraper made from twenty-four-inch tractor tyre sections. Matt would love that. Cheap, but effective.

Heaps of old tyres lay around the yard, and the vehicles were overshadowed by a huge fortress of silage bags. At first glance, the bags looked like plastic boulders painted black, with strips of loose wrapping stirring in the breeze. Cooper pictured them in summer, with bumble bees buzzing around the stack, attracted by the sweet smell of the silage. But a shiver of cold air reminded him that it was December, and the silage shouldn’t still be standing here, untouched.

Outside, the sides and roof of the shed were starting to turn from their original yellow to rust red. The branches of a hawthorn tree scratched restlessly against the sides – the only sign of life in the abandoned farmyard.

Behind the farmhouse stood a typical skeleton of an open Dutch-style barn, its timbers supporting only a few tatters of roof. He could see that the ridge of the house sagged in a couple of places, and the windows at the back were hung with dusty curtains. A grimy caravan stood in what might once have been the garden. Ancient bales of hay were visible through a ragged hole in the wall of a stone byre.

Another range of old stone buildings was practically in ruins. Cooper found himself inhaling whiffs of a powerful smell here and there as he moved around. A hint of ammonia suggested the presence of a number of cats. Farm cats, that lived outside and prowled the barns and sheds for rodents, doing a job of work.

Beyond the Dutch barn, a few yards down the slope, he found a series of dilapidated poultry sheds. They weren’t all that old, but had never been maintained properly. He peered through a dusty window, expecting rows and rows of battery cages. But there were none to be seen. So the sheds must have been deep-littered with straw for the birds, unless the cages had been removed.