The reality of country living did not agree with Paul and Ann Quayle.
After hightailing it back to London after a four year flirtation with life in the sticks went sour they found themselves a highly unusual home which allowed them to combine life in the capital with rural aesthetics — in one of London’s only thatched cottages.
Now, after a decade in the fairytale cottage — which is in the distinctly un-bucolic location of Kingsbury, north London — the couple have decided to sell up. The house is on the market with estate agent Acorn Properties with a guide price of £850,000.
“We had always lived in London but about 14 years ago I had a mid-life crisis and thought I needed to escape and live in the countryside,” said Paul, 53, a financial analyst. “Then I realised it was too quiet, and began to crave London again.”
Paul and Ann, 64, a garden designer, began their escape from London in Bath, but found the beautiful but compact Georgian city too small and sedate for their tastes. “We missed being in a multicultural, diverse, melting pot where there are loads of things to do,” said Paul.
The couple decided that the solution could be a home in the “real” countryside and moved out to Stoney Littleton, a hamlet six miles south of Bath. Unfortunately they didn’t like being buried in the countryside any more than they had enjoyed living in a provincial city. “We went on holiday to New York and had a kind of epiphany,” said Paul. “When we came back we put the house on the market.”
Stepping off London’s property ladder for four years meant Paul and Ann, who have four children between them, couldn’t afford to buy a family home in West Hampstead, where they had lived previously. Instead they had to look further out and although they weren’t familiar with Kingsbury, out in Zone 4, they were charmed by the four bedroom cottagecore house, which had been designed by the architect Ernest George Trobridge in the 1920s.
Trobridge was a visionary who wanted to build affordable homes for working class Londoners, using a workforce of disabled ex-servicemen (who he paid full union rates). His designs tended towards the fairytale — cottages, castles, and baronial halls — mostly in the suburb of Kingsbury.
The house was in good condition when the couple took it on, although its thatch did need replacing, at a cost of £40,000 plus VAT. “People were standing outside taking photos and videos of it being done because they’d never seen someone doing a thatch before,” said Paul.
Thatched roofs should last for around 50 years, which means the cottage’s new owners won’t have to consider redoing it for decades.
“It has been a wonderful thing living here, and our neighbours are just the most beautiful people,” said Paul. “Not one person who comes into the house hasn’t loved it.”
Despite their love of the cottage the couple have decided to sell up so they can enjoy a fresh adventure. With their youngest child off to university they plan to sell the house, buy a family flat for the two youngest children, and then head off in a camper van to explore the UK.
