Snooping around

Property of the week: New Street, Menai Bridge, Anglesey. This waterside house was built for the pilots who once sailed the Menai Strait. It has dramatic views of the Menai suspension bridge, built by Thomas Telford in 1826, which you can absorb over dinner on the raised balcony. Fireplaces in both reception rooms will quell the winter blasts; in summer you can paddle off sandy beaches. Cost: £425,000.
Carter Jonas, 01248 360410. Photograph: Carter Jonas/Carter Jonas

Wreck of the week: Besthorpe, near Newark. This 16th-century cottage has an adjoining brick barn with permission to become two dwellings, but it’ll cost you - the uninhabitable cottage would need upwards of £50,000 to install basic comforts, while the barn requires nearer £100,000. Added to the £250,000 price tag it’s a hefty sum. Still, you get four bedrooms and two receptions in the beamed cottage, and 1,600sq ft in the barn.
Richard Watkinson & Partners, 01636 611811. Photograph: Richard Watkinson & Partners/Richard Watkinson & Partners

Take three: homes in city centres. With four receptions, a kitchen/breakfast room, five bedrooms and two bathrooms, this Plymouth town house is spacious. The fashionable, tree-lined address is five minutes’ walk from the city centre, has a double-fronted limestone façade and elaborate, large rooms. Many neighbouring houses, however, have been divided into flats and offices, and the back garden is tiny. Cost: £399,950.
Lang & Co, 01752 256000. Photograph: Lang & Co/Lang & Co

Take three: homes in city centres. This half of a double-fronted town house is tucked away in handsome St Martin’s square, 200 yards from Chichester park and the city’s main shopping streets. It has one reception room, a kitchen/breakfast room, two bedrooms and a bathroom, not to mention the rose- and clematis-swagged courtyard garden. Quite a bargain at £399,000.
Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01243 786316. Photograph: Jackson-Stops & Staff/Chichester

Take three: homes in city centres. Once a grain store built by the Victorians in Byzantine style, the Granary in Bristol offers an enormous glossy living room with oak flooring, exposed brick walls, steel piping and three full-length windows. You also get an open-plan reception, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a store room. Any drawbacks you ask? There’s no outside space, not even for a deckchair. Cost: £299,500.
Knight Frank, 0117 317 1999. Photograph: Knight Frank/Knight Frank