Pair of riverside cottages, Cumbria

Given the amount of rain that's fallen in the last couple of days, picking houses so close to water may not be my best idea. But you have to agree that this is pretty special.
The pair of cottages above and below sit underneath the Victorian viaduct on the edge of the Cumbrian village of Wetheral. They're for sale separately or together.
No. 1 Mill Cottages has a hall, sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and pantry downstairs; three bedrooms upstairs, and large cellars.
No 2 Mill Cottages has lobby, sitting room, kitchen downstairs; three bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. Both have parking.
No. 2 also has a rather lovely riverside garden:

Both cottages need a fair bit of work and, given that, buying just one of the properties may not be cost-effective, particularly if your neighbour doesn't share your renovation commitment...

No. 2  Mill Cottages (except the cellars belong to No. 1)

No 1 Mill Cottages

On the market through Hayward Tod at £230k for both cottages, or £115k each. Details here, here (No 1) and here (No 2). Brochure here.

The (other) White House - dilapidated Devon villa

What the heck happened?! The world is weird and crazy and Trump is on his way to the White House and too many people now think it's OK to wear their ignorance like a badge and their racism like a party hat. 
And I'm sorry that I've introduced politics into our little place of escape on the wild web, but nowadays I'm not ready to make nice .
However, back to our little place of escape.
This gorgeous Devon villa is called the White House. It sits above Woolacomb, looking out over beaches and seascape towards Lundy Island. It is dilapidated and stunning and, at £1.6m, the most expensive property I've featured.
But there are twists in this particular tale.

The property sold at auction in February this year for £1.28m - almost double its guide price of £750k. A £300k mark-up is a pretty nifty "flip"... even with that extra bedroom the new owners seem to have found.
Let's go back a bit (I'm grateful for the detective work of fellow blogger Joyneaology). There are mentions of two elderly occupants - a Jeremy Cole, who died in 2015, and a Violet Bury.
Miss Bury was living there in the 1940s, according to newspaper reports found by Joyneaology, and there are mentions elsewhere online of the house being occupied at least until 2011.
However, it looks like that final occupant was the elderly Mr Cole and the timeline suggests he may have bought the house from Miss Bury sometime in the 1960s.

Mr Cole died in April 2015 and it looks like the house was put on the market a few months later by executors acting on behalf of a Catherine Woodcock.
Mr Cole died intestate, which means Ms Woodcock was not a relative and had no claim on the house. The house had originally been put up for auction "on behalf of a charity" in December 2015, then withdrawn from auction and resubmitted for auction in February 2016 on behalf of executors.

Was a charity able to prove a claim against Mr Cole's (or Miss Bury's) estate (there may be links to the Lundy Field Society, and possibly to the National Trust), or did Mr Cole die in a care home with a charitable arm?
Back to the house. There's very little information on the agent's website. A swish, drone-shot video and a bunch of lovely beach photos, but there are also a handful of pix taken indoors which show the gorgeous space and light.
Tho' at £1.6m, I'd spend a few quid on boarding up those broken windows before the winter rains or vandals find their way in.

Last year's listing gives a bit more information about the late Victorian property. Downstairs is the kitchen, utility, two reception rooms, office and anteroom (I had to look up 'anteroom'). Four bedrooms and bathroom on the first floor; one bedroom (or two, depending on which plan you use) and bathroom on the second floor.

Outside is (possibly still is) a double garage and gardens - around a third of an acre of site in all.
The White House is the market through Taylor Underwood at £1.6m. More  here and here.
Maybe someone should tell the Clintons?

Country houses with land, Wales & North East

A Northumberland bungalow and a Welsh farmhouse to show you today. Not the prettiest of houses but both have attractive plots of land and interesting possibilities.

This pink farmhouse, just three miles from Pendine Sands and the Carmarthenshire coastline, comes with around one-and-a-half acres and several outbuildings with development potential.
The house has three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living room, dining room and a large boot room/utility space.

Outside is a garden, overgrown vegetable garden and paddock. There's a corrugated former cowshed, a large, two-room stone and brick outbuilding, a car port with an inspection pit and a greenhouse. All in all, lots of space for £225k.

But tucked at the bottom of the agents's details, a warning that 'there is Japanese Knotweed present'. And while knotweed may not be the major problem it was a decade ago, getting rid of it is a cost you'll need to factor in.
On the market through The Smalloholding Centre at £225k. Details and more pictures here and here.
Despite the dire photography, I rather like this Northumberland bungalow, below, I think it's the 70s vibe.

Located about a mile outside the small town of Wooler, on the edge of the Cheviot Hills about 17 miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed, it comes with around three acres of land.
There are three bedrooms, a bathroom, a large living/dining room, office room, utility and a kitchen. The adjoined double garage has been converted into an extra bedroom.

The land has lapsed planing permission for six log cabins, although the Google view of the surrounding businesses don't make this an attractive area for holiday homing.
On the market at offers around £200k through Aitchisons. More here and on Zoopla here.

Another ex-hotel, Skinburness, Cumbria

My post about Lochanhead House sparked a lot of interest so I thought I'd tell you about another former hotel on the market. Because sometimes you want more than a cottage in a wood. Or a haven from the walking dead.
Skinburness Hotel, around ten miles from Silloth in the Cumbrian coastal village of Skinburness, doesn't have any internal photos. Nor even a description of the inside of the building, number of rooms, bathrooms etc - the usual stuff you might expect.
That, plus various notes on the agent's website make me wonder whether this is just a fairly expensive plot of land for sale. Which is a bit weird because the hotel is the middle of the village, as Streetview helpfully shows.

It was a hotel up until 2006. And a pretty handsome one at that - the original building dates from 1878. There are some pictures and videos taken by urban explorers in 2011 on derelictplaces.co.uk and in this 28DaysLater video, shot earlier this year:

Back in 2010, a company called Northstar Capital Projects, part of basket of businesses linked to Darlington football club owner George Houghton, won planning permission to demolish the hotel and build a 64-bed nursing care home in its place.
In 2006, villagers had campaigned to save the hotel, but by 2008 they broadly backed demolition plans, with the planning officer noting:

The hotel is long past the time when it can be renovated and most residents look forward to seeing the building replaced...The building is in a declining state of repair, although remaining structurally substantial.

SAVE Britain’s Heritage objected, saying that the hotel is a significant example of the work of architect Charles Ferguson and "capable of economic repair".
However, nothing happened and planning permission lapsed. And Northstar shut up shop.
At least four sets of owners have gone bankrupt, according this excellent piece on sometimesinteresting.com, looking at the hotel's history, with gorgeous pix by Guy Carpenter of Gullwing.

So, you have a former hotel, standing on around one-and-a-half acres in the middle of a pretty Cumbrian village that is unlikely to be viable as a hotel, or a care home, and would need the council's OK to become anything else.

It's gorgeous on the outside, a bit of a dog's breakfast on the inside, some rooms not too bad structurally, others very water-damaged. 

But definitely not the worst we've seen on 'Wreck'...

On the plus side, it is BIG. It's been on the market a year and even at £250k the price is likely to be negotiable. 

On the market through Edwin Thompson. Details here and here.

Lochanhead House, Dumfries - update

I had a couple of emails after my post about the semi-derelict Lochanhead House (here) which warranted an update. My spider sense tells me there's a bigger, sadder story here.

Helen wrote to say that she and her husband have tried to view the property several times in the five years it's been on the market:

The owner of Lochanhead is an elderly lady who has given directions that only a cash buyer can view the house - we have tried to go and view several times...but excuses have been made as to why we couldn't, with the last being refused as we are not cash buyers. We were hoping to go and survey what work needed done but that hasn't been possible. 

She notes that five years ago, when the property went onto the market, the building still had all its windows and roof so dereliction has been "quite quick".
Jane made a similar comment in her email, pointing out that ion 2011 the listing on Rightmove showed a rather lovely interior; "I can't imagine what has happened to it in the last five years."
The original listing has gone from Rightmove but the 'ghost' pictures are still there. Here's a couple:

I did a bit more digging.
In 2014, Lochanhead's owner applied to demolish the manse and build two houses in its place. Permission was refused, with the note on the decision pointing out that demolition of the house "should be a last resort":

It's loss cannot be re-provided. Lochanhead House is a prominent local building, highly visible from the A711 road and well known locally...No evidence has been provided that this significant and traditional building cannot be restored. It would be a grave and regrettable loss to the area for a building of this nature to be demolished. 

Food for thought given the estate agent's suggestion that any buyer should consider demolition and rebuilding.
Let's go a bit further back.
Lochanhead House ran as a hotel from at least the mid 1980s to 2000. I found a file online posted by a chap to a local history site. He was writing (in 2011) about his life in rural Auchengray. It included this snippet about his daughter, Anne:

Anne worked in the Lochanhead House Hotel, Lochfoot for a few years then in 1989 she  took over the lease and with the help of Betty ran it as a hotel, bar and guest house for 9 years.
Betty used to love chatting to all the guests and regulars and both she and Anne did all the cooking and baking themselves.
They employed quite a few local young people for waiting duties and were always busy doing meals at the weekend... The bar would get quite busy at the weekend with the regulars coming in to play pool or darts or just for a pint.
They let out five bedrooms which were mainly taken by travelling salesmen.
Anne and Betty used to have a barbeque every summer and on their last day before leaving in July 1998 had the final one and all the regulars came along.  It must have been a sad day for Anne and Betty as they had made a lot of friends over the years. 

Here's Betty (left) and Anne receiving flowers from the regulars on their last day at Lochanhead:

So, up until 1998, Lochanhead had been leased out as hotel. A year later, work began (apparently without permission) to change its use from a hotel to a dwelling house and the house was sold in 2002. 

The new owner, Mrs C., lived in the house for four years and, at the time of a site visit in 2013, Lochanhead had already suffered considerable damage from "poor quality alterations and repairs"; storm damage; vandalism, and theft.

The elderly lady owner has been trying to sell the house since 2008 and, in an appeal last year, sounded in a bit of state - unable to live in the dilapidated house; unable to sell it; unable to get a grant to repair it, and living in temporary accommodation or with relatives.

So. We have a house that was run as a small hotel and pub until 1999 - the owners of which moved to new bungalow in the grounds in the 1980s (presumably when Betty and Anne took over the lease).

The hotel was sold to a Mrs C in 2002, who seems to have been under the impression that she'd be able to build two more houses on the land. She moved out after four years - couldn't find out why or where to - and first put it on the market in 2008. 

By 2011, it was still pretty spiffing looking, albeit looking rather more hotel than house. 

Thereafter it began to fall apart - presumably helped by being unoccupied and vulnerable (reasons to support the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership) and by Mrs C becoming older and frailer. 

By 2013, parts of the roof had collapsed and the house was "barely habitable".

In 2014, Mrs C applied for planning permission to demolish Lochanhead and replace it - initially with five houses and then with two. 

Neighbours objected (including the new occupants of the hotel owners' bungalow) and the application was refused last year. An appeal was lodged and may or may not be ongoing.

In the meantime, the house is back on the market as a £150k wreck. 

Lochanhead House is on the market through GGM&W. Details here.