Where in the world.......?
So. Once
I'd finally got on board with the idea of a self-build somewhere else, the discussions
began about the Where? We eventually drew up a list of
criteria - the 'must haves' and the 'would be nice to haves...' but also the 'not
likely', the 'heaven forbid' and the 'never in a million years' criteria.
The 'must have' list was quite long....too long to be useful, so we had to whittle it down to a short list that we both agreed on. It's fair to say that this took some time!😄 We eventually created the definitive list, but not necessarily in this order:
- a decent sized plot or a
'knocker-downer'
- in the north
- rural
- long distance views (as our current house is totally surrounded by huge mature trees)
- dry stone walls area
- large village/small town
with a doctors, dentist, village shop, community center and pub
- an active local community
- good hill walking accessed directly from the house
- within a 20 minute drive of
a swimming pool - very high on my list!
- not too remote
- ideally on a south facing
slope
The
search began..... and what a search it turned out to be. Imagine if you will,
the ups and downs, the highs and lows and the rollercoaster ride of 'just' trying to
buy a house in England when you don't know where you actually want to live. Now double or triple those emotions and you'll have a
vague idea of what the search to buy a piece of land or a 'knocker-downer' in an
unknown area turned out to be.
We started north. We have family and friends near Preston, Kirkby Lonsdale and Skipton - all lovely areas, pretty villages, nice communities, lots of hills, plenty of drystone walls and long distance views, so lots of the boxes were theoretically ticked. They all appeared to have potential but, once we started looking for a place, various problems cropped up:
- Firstly, all towns and cities are obliged to have a register of plots of land available for self-builders. Great idea we thought, but as we added our names to a wide range of registers in different places and looked at the land that was available, we spotted a flaw: what little land there was was basically the odds and sods of land the big builders didn't want, had rejected as too difficult or was in an awful position. The classic ones were a tiny triangle of land trapped between a motorway, a mainline railway and a very busy dual carriageway and one on a very steep north facing slope with a swamp at the bottom! We kept our names on the lists, but we never heard a peep from a single Local Authority. Of course, because no self-builder will touch such skanky sites, the L.A's can claim that there's no demand for self-build land and therefore don't have to try to provide anything better. It was a somewhat demoralising start.
- The area near Preston (1) has become commuter belt with vast amounts of new builds going on. This is because the City Council had failed to create the legal documented requirement of a 5 year supply of local housing land, so any house building applications were assessed against National Policy rather than Local Policy. Building developers had spotted this gap, and by using National Policy assessments (and possibly by knowing the right people in Parliament?!) they got Planning Permission for large housing estates in the area, so huge amounts of crappy new housing estates were being chucked up at speed. Just the village Ower Dave now lives in has had almost 200 new houses built since 2022 and the 6 year fight by the local community to get permission refused for yet another 95 houses has only just been won (Well done Ower Dave and the Parish Councilfor sticking with the epic battle!) But the village has been swamped and changed by the houses already built and, obviously, the promised infrastructure improvements for health, education and food shops have never materialised. Why am I not surprised that the developers have found loopholes to renege on Planning Conditions? Anyway, it wasn't the area for us. Too busy, far too full, only flat farmland with no public footpaths and no swimming pool close by. Rejected.
- The Kirkby Lonsdale area (2) is stunning. It's close to the gorgeous mountain of Ingleborough, the lovely town of Ingleton, lots of fabulous walks, some great caves and the coast as well as The Courtyard Dairy - the world's best cheese shop! BUT it was in between The Forest of Bowland Protected Area and the Yorkshire Dales National Park, so there was not a cat in a dog's home chance of getting Planning Permission to build a new house, plus it was just too far away from our daughters in Chesterfield and Nottingham and Himself's parents in Leicester for us to ever be able to do a quick pop-in visit for a cuppa and a chat and, realistically, not an easy route in an emergency situation. Much as we loved the area and the walking, it was a bit too remote. Rejected.
- Skipton (3) is a very pretty town full of outdoorsy people, outdoorsy shops and some lovely pubs, bistros and a very nice 25m swimming pool. It's an area we know pretty well as we have spent lots of time around there over the years. The scenery is fabulous and, occasionally, quite dramatic. It's a great area for walking, cycling and wild swimming. It ticked LOTS of boxes and we were hopeful of finding somewhere - we even signed up with all the local Estate Agents to get notifications of new properties and started to look at places quite seriously.....until one journey back home to Chesterfield took well over 4 hours instead of the usual 2 and a bit! We realised that, if we moved up there and there was an emergency with Himself's elderly parents in Leicester (1&1/2 hours south of Chesterfield) we could be caught up in a 6 hour plus journey to get to to them and, as we knew that Himself's dad had a life limiting illness, that meant the Skipton area wasn't an option. Sadly rejected.
We then had a 'now what do we do' period as we thought about all the areas north of us that we liked. In amongst our musings, an old friend offered us the use of her holiday cottage in Swale Dale (4) up in the north of North Yorkshire, not that far from the border with County Durham so we could investigate that area. It was absolutely delightful, glorious hilly scenery, drystone walls, close-ish to a couple of nice towns and it really amused me to find a village called Crackpot, BUT it was in the Yorkshire Dales National Park so hopeless for getting Planning permission for a new build. It was also an area with lots of little country roads, often only one lane with passing places, slow hilly routes, no swimming pools within a sensible distance and the main route back south was via the A1....which as anyone who has used the A1 knows only too well, can be a nightmare because of the huge volumes of traffic using it and, as our drive back to Chesterfield showed, it was too far north and too long a journey to Leicester. Rejected, although we had a very nice time up there!
We were then told about the Saddleworth Valley (5) in Lancashire. As someone who has Yorkshire running through me like the words in a stick of rock, I had to take a deep breath before I agreed to go look at somewhere in Lancashire, but go we did. It was very pretty, the villages of Diggle and Delph were very sweet and it wasn't too far from my friends in North Manchester, but it's an incredibly popular place to live and the prices reflected that. It was also east of Oldham, which meant the westerly winds would carry dirt and pollution from Oldham across to the valley. Too expensive and too close to Oldham. Rejected.
By this point, a good 18 months or more into our search, we had visited dozens of potential sites, houses, knocker-downers, ex-chapels, barns, manky bungalows, dilapidated farm houses and even a grotty old house with a decommissioned abattoir on site ....we actually seriously considered that one and visited a couple of times as it was in a great location but common sense prevailed in the end as it had been on the market for a long time and the farmer who owned it refused to budge on the price plus he controlled the very potholed access road which, according to the neighbour, he refused to improve as he could still get his tractor up it!
We had also eventually learned that if we thought somewhere was too remote, we didn't actually need to go and see it because it was always too remote - but we did have to go see quite a few before admitting defeat on remoteness!
I was starting to get hacked off at ever finding anywhere and with them all being so far away from our family, so I started sending Himself 'Right Move' links to places in Derbyshire (6) instead. He took some persuading because parts of Derbyshire are in the Peak District National Park or the Derbyshire Dales National Park and parts of the area didn't have dry stone walls.....but it was all considerably closer to our daughters and his parents, so we started looking in earnest down there instead (although Himself still found the occasional site further north for a while!)
The trailing round to suss out the areas began all over again. We found a couple of grotty, run down towns, plenty of gorgeous villages, fabulous scenery and secret valleys, all with great hill walking potential, but the prices were prohibitively high in the Peak District and the chances of getting Planning Permission were slim to impossible.......until, one morning I came home to find Himself positively jiggling with excitement as he announced "I've found somewhere interesting!" We'd been here before, so I didn't get my hopes up as we went to look on his computer at what he'd found.
Long story short, A grotty cottage with Planning Permission for a big extension set in a good sized garden had just come on the market. The cottage was really a knocker-downer in a great location in a tiny village just south of Ashbourne near the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border. We phoned and got a viewing that afternoon then spent the next few hours researching the area, the village, Ashbourne, walking routes and swimming pools! On paper it ticked lots of our boxes.....
It was a beautiful drive down, the sun was shining, spring was in the air and we were both trying desperately not to get too excited - we'd been here before, many a time! We got got the village a bit early and had a wander round - pretty Gothic revival houses, a sweet little community room, friendly people.... it was looking hopeful. We walked up the road to the cottage, leaned on the wooden gates, looked at the cottage, looked at the view, looked at each other and said in unison "this is it!!" Going into the cottage and seeing the views from upstairs then walking round the garden just confirmed it for us. This was indeed "it".
First thing the following morning we put in our offer, then had a stressful 24 hours of waiting. When I came out of yoga the next morning, my phone pinged.
The message from himself simply said YES!!!
We'd got our site!
Although none of the marked search areas look very big on this map, they represent well over two years of seemingly endless and often fruitless computer searching, months of driving to and around the various areas (and a few other areas that aren't even mentioned because one visit to the area was enough for us to know that area wasn't right for us!), plenty of getting lost down remoteroads and tracks, sadly deciding that some sites were just too big a project even for us, many a nice lunch in pretty towns, swimming pools investigated and drive times from potential sites considered, high hopes repeatedly dashed - one was a reasonable site in a nice village...but the woman working in the village shop was SO unnecessarily rude to us that we instantly decided we didn't want to live in that village! And there were tears, usually mine, of depair that we'd ever find the 'right' place for us.......and then we did.
