Snooping around – in pictures

In town: Devon. Huge windows in the sitting room and two of the four bedrooms look out over the sea and Brixham harbour. It’s a shame you’ll have to negotiate furniture round the eaves in the two attic bedrooms. Cost: £440,000.
Marchand Petit
Photograph: Marchand Petit

In the country: Argyll. This is a former lighthouse keeper’s cottage in Toward with water and mountain views, yet it’s also commutable from Glasgow. Yours for £299,999, it has three beds and half-an-acre. But it’s not the glorious isolation you might think: there is a clutch of other cottages close by.
Strutt & Parker
Photograph: Strutt & Parker

Wreck of the week: Essex. Great Braxted, near Braintree, is the setting for this £350,000 Victorian schoolhouse. It’s derelict, so you’ll need about £200,000 to renew the floors and ceilings and to fit it out. But it has the potential for a four-bed, four-reception house with a huge kitchen, outbuildings and farmland views in a third-of-an-acre. It sits on a B-road with no pavement, so you’ll be pretty car-bound.
Fenn Wright
Photograph: Fenn Wright

Historic home: Berkshire. This £399,950 two-bed period beauty in Hermitage, near Thatcham, is believed to date back the mid-17th century. The ground floor comprises a spacious reception hall with inglenook fireplace number one, a cosy sitting room with brick floor and inglenook fireplace number two, a kitchen, a bathroom and a third bedroom, which could be used as a family room. There are two more bedrooms upstairs, and outside plenty of garden to play with.
Click here or call Hamptons, 01635 898561
Photograph: Hamptons