Houston’s Historical Homes

Wood Lane Hall is listed grade i and seems to me to represent pretty good value for money, compared to some other places I've shown you. It has date stones of 1649 and 1651.  It is in an area of outstanding natural beauty.  As usual with really interesting historic properties I want it, and no doubt the rest of my family would hate to live in such a place. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list- entry/1134490 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-73025713.html Over 7k sq ft of accommodation.  See the article below from the Steeple Times.  The property has been reduced from £750k http://thesteepletimes.com/opulence-splendour/wheel-window-wood-lane-hall/ This article does show a floor plan, too, which the Rightmove brochure omits. The first thing to do on moving in would be to take out the fitted kitchen.  That awful orange pine has no business in such a house.  The floor to ceiling cupboard by the chimn...

Listed grade ii*, this early 18th century house represents amazing value for money, having six bedrooms and a separate holiday cottage and stables.  It is rather similar to the houses featured below in Beverley and Kings Lyn.  I don’t know why being by the side of a road in Horncastle doesn’t seem as bad as being by the side of a road in Kirkby Lonsdale, see below, I suppose it is just the difference in the price that makes one acceptable and the other not so much. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-70603348.html Horncastle is a nice town, famous for its antique shops, it also has lots of nice little tea rooms and a Grammar School. It seems the current owners have made good use of the local trade and the house is decorated and furnished fittingly in good, period taste, on the whole. Here is the beautiful, spacious entrance hall tastefully decorated in white and Regency grey and furnished elegantly, not over stuffed.  The early eighteenth...

The truly interesting houses in this region are much older, but Tudor and Jacobean and even late 17th century houses in rain sodden Lancashire and Cumbria can be very gloomy.  As I have said before this area is over priced compared to sunny East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk.  But here is a bright, 18th century house if you need to live in this region and appreciate period features without wanting to indulge in the cold comfort of small, stone mullions and the floor of one room being the ceiling of the room below and no corridors and all that pre 18th century higgledy piggledy, jazz harpsichord and crumhorn blues. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63548063.html The obvious downside to this and the reason I think it won’t sell until they reduce it in price, is that it is next to the road, sans garden. https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101145799-fountain-house-kirkby-lonsdale#.XTVzDMrTWf0    The Entrance and...

Now sold, subject to contract.   https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/homes-and-gardens/inside-historic-yorkshire-country-house-1950s-timewarp-1761153 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65059297.html There is no doubt that this grade ii listed, late 17th/early 18th century house, with 19th century alterations is a blummin’ funnyossity when viewed from the garden front. The way the roof comes down over the twin octagonal bows like a mad fringe is very strange.  The Edwardian type sashes too, look out of place.  If the roof line were raised so that the three faces of the two matching octagonal bows each had their own triangle of roof, which met at the pinnacle, as usually happens with the roof of an octagonal bow, the appearance of the property would be enormously improved.  http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=322423&mode=quick It is much more sensible, plain, even dull from the street front. And y...