Two homes for writers and their sheds

There was a story on the radio this morning about Charles Dickens' "writing shed". How it was in danger of collapse and thus on a list of heritage buildings to be saved. 
Anyway, as a writing shed owner myself, I had a look at Dickens' under-threat hut. It was disappointing.

That, Sir, is not a shed.
Another example of the ways in which Dickens and I differ. We both benefitted from careers dependent on our ability to write and our ability to understand forms of writing, but beyond that? Perhaps I just need to show you my writing shed.

Dickens himself would never have called his faux-Swiss cottage a "shed"; that's down to that Radio 4 journalist. It was given to him as a Christmas gift by a theatrical friend and installed in Dickens' much-loved home at Gads Hill. Ahead of its architectural times, the chalet arrived on Christmas Eve 1864 as 94 pre-fabricated pieces in 58 boxes. 
From the chalet's upper floor overlooking the marshy edges of the Thames estuary, Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, inspired by that drifting landscape.
He pretty much worked himself to death, dying of a stroke at Gads Hill three months after completing his final, grueling, publicity tour and halfway through writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He was 58.
Gads Hill is now a private school and Dicken's writing chalet was moved to Rochester, in Kent, where volunteers have been battling to repair and preserve it.
I wrote a little while ago about the joy of finding homes with sheds or workshops to craft in, but writing sheds are different; smaller, quiet places to be.
A window, a heater, a desk, shelves for books, space for totems and touchstones.
My shed has a door curtain made from the shawl that kept my mother warm in her final year; postcards from friends and former students; oddities and keepsakes connecting me to moments.

This detached stone cottage (top and below) in the North Yorkshire village of Low Bentham has the perfect place for a writing shed - just knock down the old store in the backyard and snuggle your new shed against that wall.

Obviously there are also many other things to do - this is definitely a project house!
Including rejigging rooms and doors - why would you want an entrance straight into your lounge when you have a separate hall with a front door? And that kitchen and rear hall needs to be one room.

One of the three upstairs bedrooms is pretty poky - possible winter writing room? But it does have an upstairs bathroom and two other ok-sized bedrooms with views over the front garden.
And, while there isn't much in the way of outside space, that front garden is pretty and to the side of you is the village memorial garden which looks a lovely spot for quiet summer reading.

On the market at offers around £175k through Richard Turner & Son. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

My next property to show you isn't the prettiest. Which is why I've been skipping over it on my "possibles" list for several months. But in that time it's had a fairly hefty price drop from £130k-ish to offers around £105k. Plus, while the outside is a bit pebbledash bleurgh, the inside has a lovely granny cosiness. 

More importantly for today's post, it comes with attached stone stores one of which, to the front and looking out over big skies and the strait of Minch has fabulous writing shed/room potential.
The house is in the village of Lemreway, on the Isle of Lewis, and about 29 miles from Stornoway.
Agent details are a bit limited in relation to the sheds/stores and outside space, but Google Streetview shows a small fenced area and attached store to the rear, and a larger fenced, part-paved area to the front with an attached store to the front and side. Hills behind and the road in front, winding down to and along the water.

The house is listed as three bedrooms but one of those is a downstairs room used as bedroom which, with the downstairs bathroom, would have made the house comfortable and accessible for its very tidy occupant for some time. Upstairs are two further bedrooms with lovely views.

On the market at offers around £105k through Hebridean Estate Agency. Details on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

I love this little animated film about Roald Dahl and the importance of his writing shed to his writing. It uses clips from a 1982 a BBC Pebble Mill interview with the author. What a voice, what a mind - enjoy.

 

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.