Wreck of the Week

Thought I'd do a churches and chapels post today; it's been a while since my last one and this lovely little Welsh chapel was the prompt. Capel Carmel is a couple of miles from the village of Llanfynydd, Carmarthenshire , and around six from the market town of Llandeilo. Now normally I wouldn't feature a property without inside photos (I believe you need some idea of the renovation task ahead) and, while I'm not saying estate agents should take their life in their hands to enter an unsafe building, there are plenty who will stick on a hard hat and cross a dodgy threshold. This property does not have that benefit, but I picked it because it's unusual for a church building to be sold with two acres of its own pasture land. And it has these views. The building is basically two rooms - a large main hall and a good size vestry. There's no information about services (difficult to establish when you haven't been inside the building,..) but the locati...

We're in my neck of the woods today - Staffordshire - with this handsome big Grade II listed farmhouse. It's in Otherton , just outside Penkridge , and close to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal. More manor house than farm house, it's on rural Otherton Lane, and it looks like it's the last of a number of properties to be renovated on the farm site - you have neighbours. Spread over four floors, there are nine bedrooms, an upstairs bathroom, a large loft room and storage, a whole bunch of reception rooms, kitchen, pantry and scullery. Bags of period features, including the bread ovens and cheese pressers (is that a thing?), flagged floors and casement windows. Outside are large gardens with trees and a pond. On the market through Connells at just under £300k. More here and here .

  A colleague of mine has just come back from a family holiday on Anglesey . She raved about the beaches and the small-child-friendly attractions. It's another bit of the UK I've yet to visit.  In partial recompense, I'm featuring this gorgeous - if rather on the derelict side of do-up-able - country mansion on Anglesey. Eight-ish bedrooms, and an unknown number of other rooms. Basically, parts are a shell and how you break that up will be down to you, your architect and your amenable builder. According to the agent, it "was for many years a comfortable family home". Clearly many years ago. It comes with handsome brick outbuildings, large gardens and around four acres of land. Massive potential but also a massive job. The lack of windows makes for some lovely light and airy rooms ; ) And then there are those floor issues. Probably ceiling issues too. None-the-less, it's a gorgeous big building in a pretty location, just outside...

This pricey but impressive Bristol-ish semi is up for auction next week. Sent to me by reader Sophie, the five bedroom home clearly needs a lot of work but has lots of space to play with. Parts of it are in a dangerous state - you'll need to sign a waiver before stepping over the threshold to view it, and viewings are limited to just three fixed days. Despite all of that, 'Roxana' is likely to attract a lot of interest - grand Victorian homes in Clifton's affluent and buzzing Cotham don't come on the market very often, and this one comes with planning permission to remodel and extend. The property has a bunch of period details, including Bath stone frontage and butler's pantries, and lovely big rooms. Although the agent's blurb is light on details in terms of layout and rooms (the link goes to the plans for the extended house). So I'm not even sure whether there are, currently, five bedrooms. And the view from the garden ...