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 : )

Two Swaledale do-ups, and sheep

I've been thinking about sheep lately. Three days of being snowed in makes for introspection. 

Binge-watching the Yorkshire Shepherdess's wild weather do-up made me think about her Swaledale sheep in this snow. And about how sheep can roam freely across our hills and Dales, safely hefted through generations to their one place, their home. And how few humans in our world share the security of a hefted sheep.

Anyway, all of that prompted me to look at Swaledale itself today in my search for homely 'wrecks' to show you. Starting here.

'Ann's Cottage' (above and below) sits in one of the small huddles of houses strung along the B6270 and above the River Swale. It's not my usual pick, being a semi not a detached house, and smaller than I tend to go for, but there is something really very sweet about it. The views from that (small) garden and that kitchen window seat, the fires waiting to be lit again. The ceiling that looks like it's been replaced...

It's a very higgledy-piggedly layout, driven by the rear being lower than the front. Going in through the front door lands you onto the first floor and into the main bedroom (or second living room); go in through the back door/porch and you arrive much more sensibly in the ground floor living room. 

On the ground floor is the kitchen and living room, and a large utility room with similarly odd access - under the stairs or out through the backdoor and in again. On the first floor (or ground floor if you carry on using the front door) is that living room/bedroom plus another bedroom and bathroom. Anyway, I'm sure you're capable of reordering the rooms into something more useful.

On the market through Robin Jessop with a £175k guide price. Details and more pictures on the agent's website here and on Rightmove here.

My next pick to show you is even more out of my usual zone, being an unconverted barn. Generally, I avoid these (often overpriced, lots of build and access issues, planning restrictions) but this one is unusual in itself. It comes with a good plot of land (over seven acres) that includes your very own waterfall and bit of the River Swale. A waterfall, crikey!! Plus you have sheep for neighbours. 

Planning permission is in place to turn it into a camping barn (albeit with a bucket-load of restrictions) and the Upper Swaledale location is just gorgeous. 

It's also comparatively accessible - about a mile from popular Muker and half a mile from Thwaite, on a junction with the same B6270 that Ann's Cottage sits on.

It's a complex one, however. Planning was turned down twice before being accepted on appeal, and with the deliberately off-putting list of conditions that national park planners now utilise, there's a big hill to climb before an amateur doer-upper would recoup investing their money and time.

But every 'wreck' brings its own challenges, and we love them for that, don't we? And I've already mentioned that this particular wreck brings with it a waterfall and sheep for neighbours.

On the market through Savills at offers over £150k. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here, and on UK Land and Farms site here.

Anyway, I'll leave you with Amanda and the Owens and a particularly chilly episode of Our Farm Next Door. Get a cuppa and biscuits, settle in.

Time for a castle escape post

Three people died where I am yesterday. Swept into a sea of 10ft waves that threw angry rocks at the gathering teams of blue lighters. Today, a crazy president kidnapped another crazy president, spiriting him away and tossing bombs and chaos. 

Why am I starting here? Because this is where here is for all of us. The knowledge that, as 2026 begins, anything can and might happen. That in looking for a home, we're looking for a place of safety, to escape to, to hunker down in, a place to be. 

That in mind, I'm going to kick off this new year by offering you a remote castle to escape to.

Kinloch Castle is on the inner Hebridean Isle of Rùm, reached by ferry from Mallaig. The castle has 20 family and staff bedrooms, seven grand reception rooms and comes with 18 acres of land. It sits in a beautiful loch side position, surrounded by listed gardens and woodland and backed by the island's hills.

The castle is for sale with its contents, a living record of the travels and tastes of previous owners Sir George and Lady Monica Bulloch. The whole lot - castle, contents and acres of land on the market at very much under a £million.

Obviously there's a catch. Several in fact.

Having had its share of ennobled English owners, the island of Rùm, the castle, its contents and everything else was sold by Lady Monica to the Nature Conservancy Council in 1957, to be used as a national nature reserve. 

Parts of the island are now community owned and run, and NatureScot runs the rest. 

That community link is important. Despite the island only having 30 or so permanent inhabitants, whoever buys Kinloch Castle will need their support and will need to produce a statement of how their plans for the castle will support the island's nature, economy sustainability and culture.

The island's nature reserve status is both wonderful and limiting - the island is (largely) car-free for example. Materials and trades will need to be brought to the island and that will add to the cost of renovation. The estate agent's blurb estimates around £10m to bring Kinloch back to glory.

But what a glorious thing that would be. Have I mentioned yet that it has a ballroom? With sprung floor, hidden drinks store and a mechanical orchestra!! Honestly, who needs a $400m Mar-a-Lago knockoff with secret data overlords' bunker when you can have this thing of beauty and wonder:

Some work has been done by various quangos to maintain if not restore the castle, but clearly a great deal more needs to be done. I found this helpful video from a chap called Harry, which explains why the sale price of the castle is so low and that renovation estimate so high.

Kinloch Castle and all its parts is on the market at offers over £750k, through Savills. Lots more details and pictures on the agent's website, here.