Wednesday 20 October 2021

Beauty and beastly properties to renovate

I've had some absolutely stunning properties sent to me by readers recently. Stunning as in "eye of the beholder" attractive because, let's face it, we might all love Belle but it takes a strong heart and blind faith to take a risk on the Beast.

Pull up a chair, rest your wearies and be my guest while I take your through some of this week's beauties and beasts.


Starting with this Cumbrian beauty. A part-finished renovated terrace house on the unfortunately named Doomgate in rather lovely Appleby, it was sent to my by Christina who wrote:
I wanted to send it to you because it makes me quite sad. Clearly someone has good taste and has been rescuing this house bit by bit, but for some reason they’ve had to put it up for sale. I’d love for it to go to a buyer that will treat it just as sympathetically. Sometimes you see homes that you know looked like this at one point, and then someone slapped some ugly flooring or glossy cabinets in it or knocked down historical features for a tv cabinet and it just breaks your heart. It’d be great for it to go a wreck reader, since I assume we all care about preserving buildings like this. 
Put your hand up if you're with Christina (and me) on the "yes we care"!





Kitchen diner, living room and utility downstairs, two good-size bedrooms and bathroom upstairs, plus a full-length boarded and Veluxed loft. 
Not much space outside, but the yarden is very prettily done and feels private, Plus the location is fabulous as a starting point for the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, or dropping over the border into Scotland.




The render hiding its Grade II frontage is a bit of a beast (look at the neighbours and the rear view for what should have been) and you'll have spotted that - unusually for me - I left that picture until last. This house has zero kerb-appeal. 
But truthfully, I was smitten once I saw the dogs:




If anyone could tell me where to buy that greyhound* painting, I'd be much obliged? 
On the market through PFK at £170k. Details and more pictures here.
Which brings me to the Beast. I actually feel a bit bad about attaching the tag because someone is going to look at these pictures and see two-home family living in half an acre of land in the lovely Park area of Great Barton, close to Bury St Edmonds, in Suffolk.



Winslade is two properties and planning permission has already been turned down to demolish and replace them both - West Suffolk's planning team highlighting concerns about trees and access. 
Which means this is an expensive - albeit large - plot of land without anything more than a nod and a wink on what you might be allowed to build on it.



None-the-less, the location is lovely - and not least because it's close to Sandy, who sent me the property and who, you might remember bought and renovated one of my former wreck picks - the Old Forge in Great Barton, turning it into the quite stunning Engine House. This:


To this:


Which means Sandy has form in recognising the beauty in a beast of a building. She wrote:
I thought I’d send you this...my ulterior motive is I’m always looking to find more lovely neighbours! This is a couple of minutes walk from The Engine House in Great Barton, Suffolk. The buildings on the site are beyond creepy but the setting is lovely, it’s in The Park...what used to be the park of Barton Hall - the stately home that The Engine House served with electricity (the hall was abandoned after a fire in 1914).
Winslade is on the market through Bedfords with a guide price of £495k. Details and more pictures here and here.
And finally, here's one I came across that's both beauty and beast (actually I'm bored with that analogy now, let's drop it shall we?). 



Like our Cumbrian cottage, it's frontage has been marred by a concrete cover-up. But, pebbledash aside, the traditional shape and that original front door add a good dollop of cute.
The two-bedroom semi in Beattock, a few miles from Moffatt in Dumfries and Galloway, has clearly been empty for some time and the inside is a bit of a wreck. Which makes it our kind of place : )






Some outside pix from the estate agent would have been helpful - there is a rear garden and Google maps and Streetview suggest open fields behind.
But perhaps best of all it's up for offers around £70k. Details and more pictures here and here.

*Greyhounds. Regular readers will know we usually have two sharing our home. We're now down to one after our elderly lady Summer had a stroke three weeks ago. Summer made many appearances on Wreck over the eight years she shared our lives. Here she is in her last walk-on (and her last car trip) - when we took her and Flynn with us to admire this wreck.