Two churches: Exeter and Oxford villages

Among the most popular posts on 'Wreck..' are ones about churches. You do love your former places of worship.
So I've picked two today but I'm also going to deliver a bit of a sermon about planning permission.
The first, pictured above, is St Anthony, in the hamlet of Cowley, around one-and-a-half miles from Exeter. It's currently listed on the Church of England's Closed Churches for Disposal page, which I've previously written about here.
St Anthony's is Grade II listed, has a churchyard, and is on the market at offers around £150k. More details here. It's a lovely shape and in a pretty setting.
However, unlike the chapel below Anthony's doesn't come with planning permission to turn it into a home. That, and the more southerly location, are responsible for the £100k difference in the price.
If you were interested in St Anthony's, you'd need to start with a chat with the agent to find out what enquires have already been made, followed by a phonecall to the local planning office to see how they feel about conversion to residential use.
Then things would go backwards and forwards for a while before you have approval to buy the church; convert it; renovate it, or do anything with the portion of the ground used for burial. I would recommend reading Karl and Natalie's church conversion story, here.
If all that sounds a bit much, you could look for a church or chapel that already has planning permission in place. Like this one, in Horspath around four miles from Oxford:

Lovely building - albeit smaller than St Anthony's, with a garden and a gorgeous village green setting.
Planning permission has been in place to turn it into a four-bedroom house since 2011. So, aside from the £255k guide price, job done?
Not exactly.
Horspath villagers have been battling to keep the building available for the community and prevent its sale. Right now they're in a race with the estate agent to stop anyone buying it and living in it before they've raised the support they need to buy it themselves. That fight is outlined here.
The point being that planning permission bumps up the price but may not mean the door's open.

Sale details and more pictures of the Horspath chapel here.

A cottage, a cowshed, a farmhouse and a manor

Three unusual properties today, all suggested by 'Wreck..' readers and all in various stages of decrepitude.
First up the one-bedroomed cottage, above, emailed by Chrissie. Cute but odd, not least in it's rather cavalier attitude towards the concept of ceilings:

It's a 17th century, Grade II listed cottage a couple of miles from Wem, in Shropshire, where Henry Eckford perfected the sweet pea.
It comes with planning permission and architect plans which incorporate the half-timbered original building into a four-bed country home (hence the £135k price tag...).
Good location and nice bit of land around it. On the market through Barbers Rural - details and more pictures here.
Next, reader Wendy writes: "I've been reading Wreck of the Week for some time, hoping that I would one day retire to the UK and work on a little wreck of my own. Here's a nice one for your blog."
The Carmarthenshire property she sent me makes the Wem cottage look positively luxurious!

On the market through BJP, it's basically a farmhouse and barns - all derelict and being sold off in lots or potentially all together.
The stone cowshed (to the left of the picture), comes with around a quarter of an acre of land. Details here. There's no price on the web link but it's previously been on the market for around £70k, as a package sale with the farmhouse below.
The farmhouse - the big building to the right, is being sold on its own at offers around £125k. That also includes a quarter of an acre, plus the stone workshop you can just about see behind both buildings.
However, if the Wem cottage struggled to control wayward ceilings, this farmhouse long ago gave up trying to hold onto floors, walls and pretty much everything else:

More details and pictures here. Both properties are in gorgeous countryside near Abergorlech, around seven miles from Llandeilo.

There's also a third building, fronting the plot, and you would need to know what the plans are for that one.

Finally Dawn sent me the amazing building, below, up for auction through Pugh on April 25th.

Holme Hall, in Cliviger, near Burnley, has had a rough few years. Unoccupied since it closed as a nursing home in 2003; two big fires in 2004; owners going bust; lapsed planning permission, and derelict a long time.

The former manor house has one-and-a-half acres of grounds and Grade II* listing - and an auction guide price of £100-£150k, around a quarter of what it sold for in 2005. Details here.

Once it looked like this:

The sentimental property fool in me would like to think there's a phoenix sleeping in the ashes.

Schoolhouse and croft, Isle of Skye

Reader Russell sent me the link to this wreck and it reminded me that I haven't featured a "proper" wreck for a while. So here are a couple of projects for serious wreck revivers.
The Old Schoolhouse, above, is a one-and-a-half storey stonebuilt former schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere on the Isle of Skye. The views are stunning and the building comes with around an acre of croft land, bordered by a burn with its own waterfall.

The building is pretty much a shell - with holes - and there are no connected services. You'd need to look at the cost of renovation against demolition and rebuild but the building is a handsome shape and it'd be a real shame to lose that traditional, gender-divide two-door school entrance.

It's in the area of Glenmore, around five miles from Portree. The Old Schoolhouse is on the market through The Isle of Skye Estate Agency at offers over £65k. More details here.
The Skye Property Centre has the rather less handsome wreck, below, for sale. It's on the Isle of Raasay, off the east coast of Skye.

The property is being sold as an owner-occupied croft with around two acres of croftland, plus additional grazing rights and the derelict crofthouse you can see in the picture.
Raasay is pretty wild and (so far) underdeveloped - a few houses, a shop and a hotel; reached by ferry from Skye, and great for walking. The house looks out across the Sound of Raasay to Skye. It's a stunning location.

No 4 Mill Park is on the market at offers over £60k. Details here. Location is IV40 8PA.

Boats for living on

This time last week I was watching my father's coffin being marched through an honour guard of old soldiers.
He'd had dementia for around ten years and it eventually killed him. I've spent much of the last month travelling between his home and mine - hence the gap between posts.
In his youth, my father was an adventurer and a traveller: fighting wars in Palestine and Korea and sailing the world in the Merchant Navy. He was happiest being on or near water.
So this post is for dad - waterborne 'wrecks' he would have loved.
As a teenager, he manhauled his uncle's Humber Keel boat along the River Ouse. The Humber Keels were basically barges with motors and sails built for river and estuary travel. They're the chunkier, plainer cousins of canal boats - not so pretty on the outside but a bigger space to work with inside. This link is to a Keel that has sold but the pictures will give you an idea of that extra space.
Alan G Pease, in Goole, is a good source for Keels and barges. I think dad would have picked this one, the John William:

Built in 1904, its current owners have lived onboard for 38 years and sailed it around the UK and European coasts. Now ill health and a £10k bill to replate the hull is forcing the sale. 

The John William has four bedrooms and is on the market at a bargain £17k. There's a conditon that £10k of the sale price goes to pay for the replating, and you'll need to spend another £8-£10k on top, but this a beautiful, cared for boat. Details and more pictures here.

Pricier but still an absolute bargain for the quality is the three-bedroom, converted tug, below - the Addie. Lovely job done on it (definitely not a 'Wreck'!) and its owners have cruised the Baleraics in it (they're selling up to emigrate).

It's on the market at £125k (reduced from £155k). Details and pictures here.

There are plenty of places to buy canal boats (Narrowboats) - apolloduck is good aggregator site, but most moorings have their own sales lists too. Narrowboats, like caravans, range from elderly wrecks to swish newbuild. Secondhand prices are around the £25k-£60k mark. Have a look at Nationwide Narrowboats' list or Whilton Marina's site.

The latter has some nice looking narrow boats at under £20k - although smaller prices mean either shorter boats or ones needing work. Like the 70ft Chequered Flag, below, £11k to buy as seen. Details and pictures here.

For anyone looking to sail off into the sunset, MJ Lewis has some beautiful sea-going yachts and cruisers for around the £30-£50k mark. Like this well cared for Bermudan Sloop, below, built in 1963 and sailed by one family since 1976. She's on the market at £33.5k. Details here.

Finally woodenships.co.uk, in Dartmouth, is selling this graceful wooden Bermudan sloop, built in 1939, at a reduced price of £15k. Details here.

Sail on, dad.

Crofts and cottages, Scottish islands

'Wreck' regulars will have noticed the gap in posts. I've been away - Christmas in my second favourite place in the world: the Isle of Mull. Magical.
Anyway, I'm back now and New Year bluesy so decided to look for an island wreck.
Most of what's available are pricey plots or tarted-up holiday cottages, but here are a couple of properties worth a look.
Isle of Skye Estate Agency has the former croft pictured above for sale at £120k, with the option to buy one or two adjoining plots of croft land. The plots of land come with planning permission to build on them.
The house is part-renovated and live-in-able, with two bedrooms in the loft space and great views across Loch Vatten. It's in Ardmore, around six miles from Dunvegan and its castle. Details and pictures here.
If you're looking for something bigger than a croft, Bell Ingram has Auchareoch Farm, on the Isle of Arran, for sale at offers over £275k.
There's the three-bed, Swiss-style farmhouse you can see in the picture below and around 51 acres of mixed-use land, including farm buildings, animal sheds (the current owners run a herd of rare breed cattle) and trout ponds.

It's in a great position near Kilmory, within secluded woodland. More details and pictures here.
If privacy and price are your thing, the Isle of Lewis is still a fair chunk cheaper to buy on compared to Scotland's more southerly islands, with plenty of properties on the market at under £100k.