These are six of Nottingham’s most shocking student house stories

Straight out of a horror movie


Student houses can be an absolute nightmare. Whether it’s plumbing, pests, or bad infrastructure, you’re bound to run into a few problems. We asked Notts students to send in their student house horror stories and we’ve put together some of the worst.

It’s raining toilet waste

Plumbing is probably one of the most common problems in student housing.  Most students have probably had blocked sinks or bad water pressure, but toilet waste leaking from your ceiling might be a little bit more uncommon.

These students were surprised to see their hallway ceiling leaking on just the second day of term. The house was described as modern and newly refurbished, so the students believed they wouldn’t have much to worry about, but this was not the case at all.

An extra hundred flatmates

If you think seven flatmates is a tight squeeze, imagine having a couple hundred more. These first years were horrified to find an ant’s nest in one of their shower rooms.

The unwanted guests occupied their shower room for over two months before they were removed by pest control, leaving only one shower to share between all seven of them.

The Tab saw it first

You might have seen this next house before because it was featured nearly two years ago in an article judging the grimmest student houses in Notts.

One of the tenants this year told us they had no idea “the whole kitchen had been trashed” until they saw the article and a TikTok of the house from the year before.

Lord of the flies… and rats?

For those who live in Radford or Lenton, you’ll know running into a rat or two on the street is a pretty common occurrence. Unfortunately, there are some students who are unlucky enough to have had rats living in their houses.

This student found themselves dealing with a horrible rat infestation. They told us they could “hear the rats under the floorboards” throughout the day.

To make matters worse, these tenants had to deal with a rotting rat corpse under their floorboards that attracted a number of flies daily. They told us this picture was taken “when the flies were really tame”, and that they dealt with the issue, and smell, for weeks.

Slime time 

So far, we have heard of ants, rats, and flies making their way into student houses. However, this student had their house overrun by slugs.

Some slugs were seen on the skirting board, whilst others were particularly interested in a student’s frying pan.

Rain, rain go away

Speaking of bad infrastructure, this student was unfortunate enough to have a window that would let in the rain even when it was closed. They were probably better off having no window at all.

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