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" It is not known why the rectory, built in 1715 by the Altenberg Abbey next to the St. Antonius Church (the old location of today's Caritas home), burned down in 1872. However, as the priest was left homeless as a result, the new rectory was built between 1876 and 1879 in the Osbachtal, opposite the current Catholic Church on the L 310 to Altenberg, about 200 meters down the valley, as a typical Bergisches half-timbered house. A spacious, terraced garden originally stretched across the entire meadow from the country road down to the house. However, it was trimmed back to its current size; it was too intensive to maintain at the time. The complex, popularly known as the "Ahl Pastorate", was inhabited by the respective Bechen priests until the 1970s. The house was oversized with well over 200 square meters of living space; it was only used by the priest and his It was inhabited by a domestic helper, and clerical friends only occasionally came to visit. So it was not surprising that Pastor Joseph Höfer and his housekeeper, Mrs Berg, moved into a ground-floor, much smaller granny flat in the building complex right next to the church. Since then, the old parsonage has stood empty for many years. At the end of the 1980s, it was rented by the Social Service for Catholic Men in Cologne (SKM). From then until the mid-1990s, the building was used to accommodate long-term addicts, who had already been rehabilitated to the extent that attempts were made here in Bechen to implement supervised reintegration into society.
There had been a backlog of renovations since the last pastor moved out, and now the formerly pretty property was empty again and was visibly falling into disrepair. The Bechen parish was forced to sell the property under a long-term lease, otherwise it would only have been a matter of time before the building structure would have fallen into irreparable disrepair. The buyer should preferably be a citizen of Bechen and know the building and its history. Ideally, it should be someone who is trusted to carry out a proper and professional renovation in the sense of preserving or restoring the original condition.
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