A coastal cottage, twin churches and a prefab - under £150k

The sea is calm this morning after days of wildness. The sky is bluer and cloud dotted, the birds are numerous and vocal. This is a good day. 
Walking Paddy on the beach, up and over hills of sand (leftovers of that wilder sea), I was thinking about what theme to bring to today's post and my ferreting out of interesting wrecks.  
You seem to have liked my 'under £100k' post, clicks-wise, and also my church post. But to be honest, that's not really what 'Wreck' is about. It's sort-of you but mostly me and what properties I find quirky or cute or weirdly-interesting and want to share. Kind of like my baking - often problematic taste-wise but always done with good sharing intentions. 
So, no real theme today, just cookie crumbling.
And I think I'll start here, with this super-cute sea-front cottage, not least because they dropped the price a week or so ago, bringing it under £150k.

Firglen is a semi-detached, two-bedroom, single-storey cottage on the island of Lismore, off Scotland's west coast. It has a garden that runs down to the waterfront and is in a great position towards the end of a track of around a dozen houses, off the exit road from the ferry terminal. You could probably walk there from Oban - onto the ferry, off again at Lismore's Achnacroish terminal, and up the track to the cottage.

The house isn't a wreck, and my apologies for that. It's clearly been painted for the photos and generally smartened up and looked after over the years, but it is small and relatively isolated, given Lismore's scale and ferry dependence.
You enter via the narrow kitchen to the front, with two bedrooms, bathroom and living room running behind - most with those gorgeous sea views.

As an escape pod, it's pretty perfect.
On the market through Bell Ingram at £149k. Details, more pictures and video on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
By the way, remember the island off an island I showed you a couple of weeks ago - Eilean Loch Oscair off the coast of Lismore? That's still on the market (offers over £125k, here).
My next pick is the salt and pepper variety of cookie - definitely not for everyone (possible anyone?) but so, so interesting.
This is actually two properties being sold as a pair - a pair of chapels, in fact. Almost-identical twin chapels in Brecon with views of the Beacons, in fact. For just £125k for both.
There are issues, obvs, underpinning that twofer £125k, but I'll get to those after these pictures.

Each chapel is the same - big hall, grand entrance porch, small vestry for the priest to disrobe in. These were cemetery chapels, built for saying goodbyes, and behind them are the graves of the gone.
Access to those graves is prioritised - you only get to come and go and park nearby. There's also no planning permission, you'll need to chat with planners at the Brecon Beacons National Park (the chapels are on their patch), but I can't imagine they'd rather see these gothic lovelies crumble than be lived in.
They're Grade II listed, which is do-able, but services are limited. Mains electricity to one chapel, but no mains drainage or water to either.
The setting is lovely. In the suburbs of pretty and lively Brecon town and with those views over the Beacons - and your quiet neighbours.
On the market at £125k via James Dean. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

The final property I'll show you today is a Cornish Unit - prefab to you and me (remember my prefab post last month?).

It's a semi, with three bedrooms and a decent garden backing onto to open fields. This one is a bit more of my standard Wreck property - needs renovating, got issues, but great location and potential.
In the Devon village of Horrabridge, around four miles from Tavistock and close to Dartmoor.
Like my first property, this one has also had its price reduced recently, now up for offers over £137,500.
Downstairs is a large kitchen/diner plus separate utility room, living room, and hall. Upstairs three bedrooms (one pretty small) and the bathroom.

I'm loving those kitchen units.
Front garden has space for a couple of cars (or vans) and the back garden is a bit shed-city but removing that concrete former outhouse would give you options to extend the house.

Being a prefab however, our risk-averse mortgage lenders would be reluctant to step up but, if you've got the cash or most of it, there's a lot of good things here to work with. If you'd like to see what it could be, this beautifully renovated and extended version sold recently.
On the market at offers around £137,500 through Fulfords. More on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
Hang on, just realised there is a theme to this post - everything I've shown you is under £150k. I'll put that in the headline : ) 
See you next Thursday.

Two do-ups with big country views

Scrolling through property lists nowadays, mostly what I'm thinking is: "That was a holiday let... that was a holiday let... that was a holiday let...".
You recognise the look - comfy, cushion-y, antique-y, original feature-y. To be honest, there's a lot of lux holiday let influencing my own home decor.
I see-saw on the issue. On the one hand, there's pricing local folk out of the market, on the other there's tourism spending. But the tax loophole the government closed last year (and probably prompted this sell-off rush) needed tackling, and there are now more refurbished homes coming onto the market for buyers wanting views without the work.
At one stage, hubby and I spent weekends driving Northumberland looking for a potential holiday home/holiday let of our own to do-up. Even starting the process of buying one before fuzzy access rights made us pull out. We followed that by buying a do-up on the east coast, planning it as a holiday let but finding we never wanted to leave. So we've stayed.
Anyway, my musing was prompted by coming across another house we almost bought to let (this one) and all the work that's been done since we saw it. It was cute then, cuter now. I remember a friendly neighbour and a steep walk up.
We did love that area, the North Pennines. Wild and snowy on our visits and big, big views.
I'm going to take you there today to show you two quite similar detached do-ups.
Keepers Cottage shows its roots - a stone outbuilding off to the side of the house used to be the kennels for the keeper's working dogs. Now it has a cute metal gate and space for garden furniture.

Inside the house, some works have been done to make it comfortable for whoever followed the keeper. Central heating, a new kitchen, a bathroom added upstairs, but lots more is still as it was - those gorgeous fireplaces for instance.

There are only two bedrooms (one having ceded space for that bathroom), and a grungy downstairs shower room needs to go, but rooms are a good size and the house sits in a decent garden plot with scope for extending to make the most of those quite stunning hill views.

Keepers Cottage is in a good location, among a handful of houses on a country lane, and about half-a-mile from the pretty and active village of Blanchland, with its historic abbey, shops and a popular pub hotel.
On the market through Anton Estates with a guide price of £250k. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My second pick also has two-bedrooms and a price tag of £250k, but needs rather more work. This stone cottage however comes with an attached, double height stone byre, outbuildings, and all the views in the world. 

It's pretty remote, a couple of houses nearby in their own private plots, and the nearest place is Allendale (Town) about five miles away.
The attached byre is massive - so much scope there for extending the property (assuming it's all sound) and you've got two other stone buildings and a large timber garage for stores and workshop.

The main house just has the living room, kitchen and a bathroom downstairs, plus a large bedroom and not great (ceiling shape) spare bedroom upstairs. And, OML, what's with the dark wood ceilings?!

You're going to need to be able to chip in a fair bit of cash and time to turn this property into one that's worthy of that location and those gorgeous views.
On the market through Andrew Coulson at £250k. Details, more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here (including video tour).
All the while I've been working on this post, I've had a earworm. I think it's those big views and thinking about our drives up and up through those vast northern hills.

In a big country, dreams stay with you, like a lover's voice fires the mountainside. Stay alive.

RIP Stuart Adamson.

Remote homes with lots of land

I was felled by a runaway dachshund on the prom a few days ago. All very 70s sitcom.
Which has meant me being stuck at home nursing a face that could scare horses and small children.
But today, the bruises have faded, the scabs are gradually falling off, and I'm itching to be out walking. 
Which is why I've found myself picking properties to show you with BIG walking potential and NO chance of errant dachshunds. Because with these picks, you own all the land.
Clydach Dingle, in the Brecon Beacons national park near the town of Brynmawr, comes with what may be a Wreck of Week record of a massive 32 acres of land. 

It's not just a dilapidated farmhouse, it's a farmhouse that was three dilapidated cottages.
Plus the remains of what had been a Welsh mining hamlet - ruins of homes, a pub, cobbled street, the mine building and sealed off coal seam.
Further back in time, Clydach Dingle had been the last staging post before the crossing over the mountain to Crickhowell and the Black Mountains, its stone barn housing weary horses.
If history's your thing, you would own 32 acres of it here.

Anyway, since then practical rather than perhaps historically sensitive works have squished three homes into one and that too has deteriorated over time. The property comes with planning permission to meld everything together with the horse barn and create something snazzier.
But, looking at the planning decision (plans included a shelter for wild horses!!), permission was granted way back in 2020 and would have expired last September unless works have kept it active?
That's not clear from the property info and makes the £400k asking price a bit of a punt. Which may also partly explain its 18months on the market.
The ref by the way is 20/18812/FUL via the Beacons national park planning portal.
The plans were for a four bedroom, two bathroom house, with a large open plan kitchen, living, dining area, a separate snug and a large bootroom. Which all sounds hunky dory but clearly whoever planned those plans, pre-Covid and pre-double-Trump, didn't get a great deal further than the on-site caravan in their renovation dream.

Honestly I get that - if I had 32 acres in this gloriously wild bit of the UK, I could easily spend 15 years just walking it, planting it, and looking for wild horses.
On the market through agents James Dean at £400k. Details and more pictures from the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My next pick is even more remote and therefore carries even less dachshund danger - an island off a bigger island.

Now normally I wouldn't show you land-only properties on Wreck, particularly land overseen by a fairly territorial set of planning officers and local councillors who have so far rejected both plans for a tourism business and plans for a low-impact, off-grid, sustainable home.
Perhaps they're hoping for wild horses too?
But I'm showing you this because, well, we don't often get to consider private islands and because if you dream of a living and working space surrounded by water, you'll find your way through this particular island's gatekeepers.

Eilean Loch Oscair is off the coast of the Scottish island of Lismore in the Inner Hebrides' Firth of Lorne. Access is by your own boat (or helicopter) from Lismore's ports and there's sheltered mooring on the island. A ferry links Lismore and Oban.
The island is just under ten acres of designated croft land, uninhabited by livestock or people. There's an island spring supplying water but no services beyond that.
It puts me in mind of the Isle of Jura and the "extremely un-get-able place" where George Orwell hunkered down to write Nineteen Eighty-Four, and of Craig Easton's wonderful photobook.

Eilean Loch Oscair too feels like a place to write, to create, to rewild. Beautiful.
On the market through Knight Frank at offers over £125k. Details on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.