When the sun is shining and the lure of being outdoors is strong Claire Kenny steps away from her desk, calls her dogs, and takes them out for an impromptu country walk.
This kind of restorative screen break has only been possible since Claire and her husband Kyle Jackson made the slightly snap decision to swap their three bedroom terrace in Wimbledon for a four-bedroom coach house on the outskirts of the town of March, Cambridgeshire, shaving more than £100,000 off their mortgage in the process.
“We had always wanted to move to the country but we thought we wouldn’t be able to do it until we retired,” said Claire. “I thought I’d be in London until I was 60.”
The move began during lunch with a colleague. Claire found herself talking about her dream of country living. Her workmate urged her to do it sooner rather than later on the basis that her daughter, Lizzie, was only a toddler at the time and was not yet settled at school.
“I went home that night and said to Kyle: ‘I think we should think about it,’” said Lizzie. “He said: ‘I think that would be brilliant’ and a couple of weeks later we put the house on the market.”
The couple decided to house hunt in Cambridgeshire, close to where Kyle was brought up, but their search area was wide. “We just went with the house that we liked,” said Claire.
The coach house is full of original details including beams, doors, and cupboards, and it came with a much bigger garden than their London home plus an annexe — formerly stables — which Claire now uses as her office.
“It is twice the square footage of our house in London,” she said.
Despite this they were able to sell their Wimbledon terrace for £625,000 and paid £495,000 for the coach house.
Claire, Luke and Lizzie, now five, plus two cats and four dogs — Halloumi and Dolly, both corgis, Bobotie, a corgi cross poodle, and Marula, a rescued greyhound — said goodbye to London in March 2022.
Their new home is on the edge of March, surrounded by farmland, which makes a nice change from walking the dogs around city parks. The Norfolk coastline is an hour’s drive away and the whole family enjoys a day spent messing around on the beach.
The move has meant a career shift for both Claire and Luke. In London Claire was in charge of employee wellbeing at fashion house Burberry but when the firm started to ask staff to return to the office she decided to become a freelance wellness consultant (www.clareekenny.com). Luke left his job as account manager at a national newspaper and now works for a tech startup.
For Claire, getting out of the city has been a revelation. “I have always struggled with my mental health,” she said. “I have had anxiety, and addiction, and I found the grind and the speed of London very overwhelming. I am still a work in progress but the change of pace has been really good for me.”
