Houses with big sky views, £85k to £150k

I was thinking how, since we moved, walking the dog in a morning feels magisterial, church-like. Waking-up worries banished by big, bold skies and the peace of a long and dewy pathway.
I find myself standing still a lot; breathing, soaring.
And yes, I know that sounds a bit moonage woo-woo, but I don't think I'd ever spent so much time looking up at the sky until we moved to an edge of the world.
Here's this morning's soul cathedral.

I think that's also one of the reasons we like to look at wrecks - that promise of an affordable view. Like the two I've picked to show you today. Obviously there are reality bites bits - damaged roof, residence restriction, etc. but it's the skybathing potential I'm focusing on today.
Capel Pen y Meini (top and below) is a converted chapel in a Welsh valley with big views of rolling hills behind and to the sides. Fabulous dark skies with whisky potential.

Access is ok - on a narrow road leading to a handful of other houses and farms, with parking for a couple of cars or vans, and a deck at the back overlooking a brook, open fields and those hills.
It's not a wreck but it is fairly basic - Gen Z holiday cottage vibes. And it has to be used as a second home, with a maximum residency of 11 months in 12. Which is pretty generous tbf; easily live-in-able for most of the year with a month spent with parents or travelling...?
One, open-plan space with a bedroom squished into the mezzanine and a curtained-off bathroom area with separate loo and shower. Heating and cooking from the Rayburn.

It's all been nicely done but definitely escape pod rather than cozy Winter comfort. I think I'd want to investigate whether planning would let you replace that wooden shed at the back with a stone extension and put the bathroom in there, so you could move the kitchen and maybe create a downstairs bedroom.
Anyway, worth a punt on the price, perhaps? It's been on the market most of this year and was reduced by £10k to £150k last month.
On the market through RG Jones, details on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My next property is a four-bedroom detached house overlooking with sea views for £85k. Yes, you read that correctly - £85k.
Which is your warning that the real cost of the property will be in the extensive works that need doing. 

Suil-na-Mara is on the Hebridean island of Scalpey, off Harris, and the house overlooks the sea loch separating the islands.
It used to be run as a B&B and does feel like it stopped, dead in its B&B heyday - candlewick bedspreads, decorative spinning wheel, fluffy toilet seat covers.
I hope the bedspread owner had already moved on before this happened:

Good size lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom downstairs; three bedrooms and loo upstairs.

There's (formerly) well-gardened land around it but you'll need to give up some of that to create proper parking - the house sits on a main road and I don't know what happened to the garage shown on Google maps. Anyway, this is your big sky view across that road.

On the market at offers over £85k via Derek Mackenzie Solicitors. More pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

On top of the world, looking over the edge

You could see them coming

Two Welsh properties for runaways

In 1779, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby ran away together and set up home in a Welsh valley.
Irishwomen from aristocratic backgrounds, Sarah was escaping a male guardian's harassment and Eleanor her family's plans to marry her off.
Instead, they chose freedom, giving up inheritances to live happily together until their deaths in a house they renovated and a garden they grew.
You might suppose that, in the 18th century, the couple would have been ostracised but the reverse was true. Their home, Plas Newydd near Llangollen, became a haven for visiting artists and poets, radical thinkers and royalty. The Duke of Wellington was a regular, as was Lord Byron, Josiah Wedgewood, William Wordsworth dedicated a sonnet: "Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb / Ev’n on this earth, above the reach of time".
The Ladies of Llangollen inspired poets and writers in their lifetime, playwrights and TV producers in ours and the outsiders haven they built is now open to the public.
Albeit the ladies' mock gothic embellishments were 'augmented' by a later owner's mock Tudor.

Plas Newydd in c1875

And post- Gen. John Yorke

The ladies attached poetry to trees and showcased oak carvings from broken up pews; the General added a mock Tudor facade and collections of global oddities. Houses change and are changed by each owner. It's why we buy them; it's why, particularly, we buy wrecks and do-ups. We renovate, rebuild, decorate, reshape homes and gardens as expressions of who we were then.
The first wreck I've picked for you (top and below) is the closest I could find to the Llangollen ladies' Welsh haven.
And it's not a wreck, more tired (but I suspect some hidden issues in those old walls), but it does date from 1761 and would have been lived in during Lady Eleanor and Sarah's time.

The three-bedroom detached cottage is a couple of miles from the village of Chirk, just over the England/Wales border, and around 13 miles from Plas Newydd.
On a hill overlooking farmland (with a farm as near neighbour), Crogan Wladys comes with almost half an acre of sloping garden land to play with.
Downstairs is a large, open-plan kitchen-diner, separate utility room, good-size lounge and snug, both with woodburners. Upstairs is the bathroom and three bedrooms. 

A stairlift, handrails, portable heaters tell its owners' story of who they are now. 
Outside is a small stone barn and steps down to an underground cellar (bunker?), and a greenhouse. Plus quite wonderful views.
On the market at £425k via Morris Marshall Poole. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My second pick is one of the prettiest Welsh chapels I think I've come across. However, as the £75k price tag suggests, Seion Chapel, in Rhiwlas, doesn't come with planning permission - that would be your first task.

Two rooms - the chapel hall and a good-size vestry at the side, it's been on the market for much of this year. Which is a bit of a concern given that prettiness (I particularly love the hand-decorated walls) and the lovely rural views and peaceful setting. Perhaps the energy park plans are impacting, or perhaps Powys' planning officers have already been consulted on its residential likelihood?

Outside space is limited, basically the two areas behind the railings, but the views are what matter.
On the market at offers over £75k via Roger Parry. More on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here. 

Large and small wrecks in the Dales

I should start by admitting that I've never visited the Yorkshire Dales, at least not intentionally.
I'll have passed through it of course, maybe enroute to a holiday further north, or on school bus on a trip to some caverns or such, but I've yet to do the cosy Dales cottage stay.
Which feels a bit bad given that I'm from Yorkshire and have lived in one or other of its four counties much of my life.
Maybe it's all those gently rolling hills - I'm more of a squally seas or boho city vibe type of woman.
Or it's the sheep - all that staring; their silent judging.

I have two Dales properties to show you this week. Both on the scary side renovation-wise, and carrying a bit of a rolling hills/surfeit of tearooms price hike. 
This first one I got halfway through uploading pictures and then realised I recognised it and, sure enough, I'd featured it earlier this year in a post about proper wrecks.
At that stage it was on the market for £180k and I'd thought it weird that only the wreck of a farmhouse was up for sale, not its (very) near neighbour the barns.
Anyway, clearly that didn't fit well in a market swollen with former holiday cottages after the tax break for furnished holiday lets closed in April. So the owners of Potgill, in Garsdale, decided to package up the three-bedroom abandoned farmhouse with those neighbouring barns and a more generous portion of land and put the expanded bundle on the market.
However, even the promise of a large stone house, barns, plus 0.3 acres, with good access, in an extraordinarily beautiful part of the National Park is struggling to find a buyer willing to take on the level of work needed, and the price of the package was reduced last week to OIRO £250k.
Those factors - the enlargement, the negotiable price, are why I'm showing you Potgill a second time.
Here's some pictures, although none of the barn I note which, given the repackaging, seems a bit lax? I'm going to assume the vendor is a farmer who is refusing to clear the barns of his stacks of just-in-case wood and rusting tractor spares until he absolutely has to. Or maybe there are sheep in there... 

So, those are the pretty bits. Note the beck running through part of your land - there is no water or services to the farmhouse itself (at least, not any longer) so that beck may become important. 
Here are the less pretty bits. The farmhouse has a large kitchen, walk-in pantry, living room, and what was a laundry room downstairs, and three bedrooms and what had once been a bathroom upstairs.

On the market at OIRO £250k through Armistead Barnett. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
The next property brings the cute factor. A one-room former chapel in the North Yorkshire Dales village of Threshfield, just across the River Wharfe from Grassington.

I'm a bit bothered that the chapel is being marketed as two bedrooms and one bathroom when it has neither - it's just one room with a sectioned-off kitchen area.
Nor does it have planning permission to turn it into a home or add those missing rooms. Laziness or opportunism from the agents?

It is however a pretty building sitting in its own (small) garden area and backing onto open fields and lovely hill views.
The village has all the basics (pub, coffee shop, fire station, school, garage, Spar shop round the corner, Mayor-led Town Investment Plan and quango-led Local Plan).

Do sound out Dales' planning officers (Threshfield is part of Craven, covered by the South team officers) about the likelihood of getting change of use to residential before you consider making an offer on that £125k guide price.
On the market through Dacre, Son & Hartley - details on their website here and on Rightmove here.

Anyway, back to sheep and that creepy stare thing they do - sometimes it's a warning to run.