The front room of the late Ron Gittins’s flat has a Pompeii Villa of the Mysteries vibe to it. The hall could be an Egyptian tomb. The bathroom, an aquarium fever dream. Handmade fireplaces include a lion 3 metres tall, a minotaur and – in the kitchen – a Roman altar.
The interior of Gittins’s home would stop you in your tracks anywhere. The fact that noone knew it was there, that he spent decades creating it by stealth in his rented ground-floor property in the Merseyside town of Birkenhead, stops you a bit longer.
