NESTLED between empty houses with their boarded-up doors and smashed windows, a woman tends to potted shrubs covering a small patio.

Two streets to the right, another woman pulls back her curtains and looks out at a row of derelict homes as the sun streams in through her window.

The two neighbours know each other well as part of a close-knit band of proud homowners who have been left stranded among the ruins of Ferryhill Station, County Durham.

Nearby Chapel Row -the street named yesterday by property experts as the cheapest place to buy a house in England and Wales over the past five years -was pulled down after its homes were declared unfit for habitation.

And now those living in the surrounding streets fear their houses, too, are being marked for demolition by Sedgefield Borough Council and the Three Rivers Housing Association.

Audrey Friend, 52, and her husband Malcolm, bought their home in Wolsley Street 20 years ago for £9,000.

She said: "I came to Wolsley Street with my husband and we started work on the property.

"I was so proud, and I am still proud of my house, but look at what has been done to the area.

"It has been flattened and destroyed, and apparently my house is one of the next to go."

Fifty terrace homes have now been pulled down in the once-prosperous Ferryhill Station.

The majority left standing are boarded up, although the odd window box and brightly painted door reveals that a spark of life remains in the forgotten community.

Carol Bell, 62, and her husband Harry, 53, say tenants who moved into the area in the 1990s are to blame for its demise.

Mrs Bell, who paid off her 30-year mortgage last year, said: "They did not own the house, and many of the tenants only stayed for three or four months, so they just smashed it all up. Now look at the place.

"If you say you are from Ferryhill Station, people look in disgust. But I love my house and I would not choose to move, except that it is like a ghost town, and not a very nice one anymore."

A Three Rivers Housing Association spokesman said it had been working with the council and residents over the past five years to find a long-term solution to regenerate the village.

"We recognise the problems and the residents' concerns regarding the area.

"The decline of this type of older street terrace housing is, unfortunately, not unique at Ferryhill Station.