Homes with old or new business potential

Well, here I go again stepping outside of my usual picks for 'Wreck', but in a world in flux there's power in flex. Which is a pretty pompous way of saying I've selected three semi-commercial properties for you this week instead of my usual detached wreck on a plot.
Of course live/work properties have been around forever and long, long before we started building them into planning categories. Half a century before I had my first garden office, my nana was baking her legendary breadcakes twice a week and selling them from her front door to queues of neighbours.
These three properties are many steps up from that sort of home working but all offer a more quirky challenge for renovators and lifestyle changers.
I'm going to start at the very top of the price and scale range with this large house plus possible holiday let plus museum plus tearoom plus gift shop plus six acres of land on Scotland's Isle of Mull.
Torr A’ Chlachainn House is an extended, detached house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs (one ensuite) and a bedroom and bathroom within the downstairs extension. The rooms in the original house are bit small and awkward and could do with some rethinking, and obviously updating.

The Old Byre Heritage Centre is a large, two-storey building with tearoom and giftshop on the ground floor and the museum, on Mull's history and heritage, on the upper floor. It's cute, but no lift and accessibility is something you'll want to think about if you want to keep the museum (its contents will cost you extra).

There's an odd part-storage, part Ballamory-themed play area outbuilding, and the two storey, one-bedroom Wee Bothy. There are gardens, a field currently rented out for dog training, woodland and carparking.

On the market at offers over £695k through Bell Ingram, details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My next pick is a house with attached bakery and baker's shop in the lovely North Yorkshire village of Reeth, in Swaledale.

And, so we're clear, those are breadcakes on that counter. Not rolls, not barmcakes, not baps.
The house itself is pretty chunky - four bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs; sitting room and two kitchens downstairs, plus a small dining room that's been turned into a (sort-of) tea room.

Next to that is the shop plus the bakery and prep room, with a courtyard garden and stone outbuilding.
Again, not the best configuration if you want to continue the bakery and tearoom business (you've got competition) and you could definitely do much more with all that upstairs space.

However, it's in a good, central position in a popular Yorkshire Dales village, so lots of potential.
On the market at offers over £315k through Alderson Estate Agents. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
The final property I want to show you is has the lowest price but the biggest challenge. Hell, it's current planning permission means you can't even live there yourself - you'll be renovating it as a holiday let. Maybe you could do something heritage-tourist or eco-business with the ground floor..??

It's a 16th century ex-watermill in the Cumbrian Lake District. Very, very beautiful on the outside, very much a wreck on the inside.

Widewath Mill isn't listed but that hasn't prevented Lake District National Park planners from setting some pretty tough conditions - it's taken three years for this project to get approved.
On the upside, you do at least know that everyone who could possibly get to comment has had their say, including the bats.
The plans are designed to protect the mill's mechanics and gubbins while wrapping around a high-end one bedroom holiday let. The two-storey mill plus separate stone barn sits on a long, narrow plot that includes the section of river feeding the mill.
So, we're talking carefully renovating a non-mortgageable but beautiful bit of Cumbrian industrial heritage in a protected area of countryside and then charging others to holiday there.
On the market at a cash buyer only guide price of £200k via David Britton. Details, videos and pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.  

Three properties to hide away in

Well, this is turning into quite the week, again. Any of you feeling the need to run away and hide from this new world ordering? Then follow me...
Whittle Dene is a collaborative community living in 10, mostly handbuilt, cabins in the middle of 12 acres of Northumberland wood inhabited by fairies (maybe).
This cabin, Stanhope, was built in 1927 and the cluster of cabins has existed in Whittle Burn Woods since the 1900s. It is a historic site in the middle of ancient woodland, cared for and protected by volunteers and residents. And obviously pretty rare for one of the cabins to come onto the market.
Here's some pictures before we go further.

Stanhope is off-grid to the extent that electricity is provided by its solar panels and back-up generator, heating by log burner, hot water by Calor gas boilers and water is mains fed. So, as long as you don't rock up with your Android or Apple smartphone, you're fairly hidden from those maddening crowds.
Outside are three garden areas with fruit trees, a geo dome that could become a greenhouse, and chicken coop. Boundaries between cabins are "fluid" - an incentive to work your plot.

There are two complications for any of you thinking weekend getaway rather than lifestyle choice - access and lease restrictions.
No car access - it's a walk through the woods. You're buying the leasehold (not freehold) and that has been on a rolling one-year lease for 100 years. The current lease holder is trying to see if that can be changed to a more market-normalised 20 year lease. The lease only allows 51 weeks of the year occupation - you have to spend Boxing Day to New Year's Day somewhere else.
Complications aside, this is a very special cabin in a very special wood offering a pretty exceptional escape to a more nature-led life shared with a handful of like-minded neighbours.

On the market at offers over £125k (leasehold) through GFW, details and more pictures on the agent's website here and on UK Land and Farms site here.
My next pick to show you is a more traditional remote cottage. Cefn Coch is a two-bedroom Welsh cottage surrounded by fields and farms and sitting pretty much on its own on a winding set of lanes.

It has a gated and hedged garden, parking and privacy.

Downstairs is the lounge, kitchen and a bathroom/shower room. Upstairs are two bedrooms.
It's not big, but there's space to extend and if you were able to buy up part of the neighbouring fields you'd have a pretty good size smallholding.

The nearest village (Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant) is couple of miles away, the nearest town (Oswestry) about 10 miles.
The downside is the cottage is up for online auction with a Buyer Premium of 5%. Which means that whatever you 'win' the house for at auction, you'll pay an extra 5% on top of that price to the estate agent. Plus all your other legal fees, renovation costs etc.
You already know I'm not a fan of UK agents' rush to auction properties - it basically means the buyer pays their own costs and the costs the seller would normally have paid. Often more.

Cefn Coch is up for auction on 25th February with a guide price of £150k through Town and Country Properties. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

And my last property to show you is definitely, definitely not my usual pick. Not even sure it counts as a property.
Here is the 30 acre island of Eilean Mor, in Loch Sunart in the Scottish Highlands.

It's uninhabited. Access is by boat or over the causeway at low tide.
There is no planning permission in place (yet?) and the island sits within the Sunart Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Sunart Special Area of Conservation (SAC) - which means dealing with Nature Scot and the umbrella body the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
But it is a whole, and a wholly beautiful, island for sale.
On the market at offers over £275k through Bell Ingram. Details and more pictures on the agents site here.

Homes in communities with heart

Early Monday, I returned to the beach. My first visit since.
As Paddy ran rings around disaffected seagulls, I added my own prayers to the thousands of invocations whispered since 3pm on January 2nd.
I asked God to cherish the souls of Grace and Sarah and Mark and to patch the hearts of their families.
I told Mark and Sarah and Grace that they had died being themselves and that their lives had been magnificent. 
But mostly I went to the beach to ask the still fractious sea to let Grace be, to let her come home. Come home.
When I started this blog 15 years ago, I was looking for a home for my family and I had a clear idea of what that would be. Somewhere with space and land around it, lots of space. Maybe remote, maybe close to the sea, but definitely away from, mostly away from, other people.
I wanted chickens more than I wanted neighbours.
I don't think like that now and, while I still look for 'wrecks' that offer remoteness, more and more I think of the power and need of community.
Here, then, are three properties rooted in strong communities. 

Rose Cottage is in the village of Habertonford, a few miles from the livelier Totnes. Devon, and particularly this area of it, is rooted in active and creative communities. Totnes is an indie, arty, buzzing market town, brimming with cute shops, overflowing with music and community-led events. Transition Town Totnes is a remarkable umbrella project, linking environmentally positive projects and sustainable communities across the area.
Habertonford is much smaller in size but perhaps not in ambition - its community having already saved and are now running their village shop. That shop is at the other end of Old Road to the cottage.

Realistically, this isn't a home for tall men; there are more head-cracking beams that rose bushes in Rose Cottage. But it is Devon cottagey in its most glorious.
Living room and small kitchen downstairs, two bedrooms and bathroom on the first floor, another bedroom running through the large converted loft.

Outside is a large courtyard (which is also your parking space) with outbuildings and a smaller garden bit to the front.
On the market through Wood's Estate Agents at £290k. Details, video and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

My next pick feels wrong to have on a site called 'Wreck of the Week', because it clearly isn't a Wreck. This four-bedroomed detached house in Padiham is, was, a very much loved and cared for family home. Just got beyond it's owners' capacity perhaps, and beyond what is fashionable in a Manchester commute home.

Personally I'm a sucker for a crazy paving feature wall, would have it any day in my own home. 
Outside is a large garden which manages to be both surrounded by neighbours but feel distant enough.
Inside four bedrooms, plus bathroom upstairs, two large reception rooms, kitchen and a jiggle of small rooms to sort downstairs.

Padiham itself made it onto the Guardian's list of happiest places to live in Britain. Marked for its Lancashire humour and incomer independence. Artisan shops - tick; access to big hills - tick; commuter convenient - tick.
This particular house is on the edge of that, sitting in a leafy street next to the local cricket ground and football club Padiham FC - currently sitting second in the North West Counties Football League, without Hollywood's help. 

On the market through Mortimers at £385k. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here, and on Rightmove here.

And finally, and just to show you how flexible I can be on the detached-wreck-with-land thing, I've picked a house that is slap bang city urban.

 
Albeit one in the sort of active communities area that every big city has - the nice and quirky bit where the artists and academics live, where people carve their trees and fundraise for fountains. 
This particular house is gorgeous on the outside, pig-ugly on the inside. 
Previously split into some sort of HMO configuration and fitted out with pub carpets and poor judgement, it's going to take time and cash to shape this into a beautiful home again.
However, were that not the case, you'd be looking at at least another £100k.

The five (-ish) bedroom house is on Marlborough Avenue, in Hull's Avenues Conservation area.
Hull, more accurately Kingston-Upon-Hull, made it onto the National Geographic's 'Best of the World 2026' list - one of its top 25 places to see globally and the only destination chosen in the UK. Crikey.
Back to our 'Wreck' pick.
Downstairs you've got two reception rooms, a large kitchen (OML, that carpet!) and some reconfiguring to do in the middle (two staircases, two halls...). Upstairs sort of lost me; the staircases, multiple bathrooms, but having that already-converted loft is a bonus.

On the market at £250k through Home Estates. Details and more pictures on their website here, and on Rightmove here.

Incidentally, if you live in a community-centred place, do let me know - I'm always looking out for new locations to hunt for wrecks : )