Home alone
Standing in splendid isolation on a wild moor, the house where you’re guaranteed not to have trouble with the neighbours
MANY of us occasionally dream of buying a house away from it all. Charlie and Daphne Tomkins have certainly achieved that – and have even managed to turn the remoteness of their home into a money-spinner.
The couple’s story starts in 2003 when they were watching a home video of themselves hiking around their favourite stamping ground – the West Allen valley in the North Pennines. At 1,750ft above sea level, this is a beautiful, wild-moorland landscape where the only settlement of any size is Coalcleugh, one of the highest in England.
Charlie and Daphne were fascinated by an abandoned old cottage that kept turning up in the background of the film. So the next time they were in the area they asked about it. They learnt that the cottage’s owner had long since stopped using it and was keen to sell.
‘But it was in such a dreadful state, with damp throughout, a sagging roof and no form of power or water supply, that it was difficult to put a price on it,’ says Charlie, 58, who spent 39 years in the Army, rising from private to lieutenant colonel. ‘So we agreed between us to go along with a neutral estate agent’s valuation. He came up with a price of £65,000.’
There then followed nine years of sheer hard work as, bit by bit, the couple turned that broken-down wreck of a house into Sunnyside, the plush cottage that it is today. Every spare penny was put into the renovation and, while the Army moved them around to postings in York and then Camberley, they returned to the cottage to work on it at weekends and every holiday.
‘It was romantic in a way,’ says Daphne, 57, who used to work as a freelance human-resources executive. ‘We had no power so we spent our evenings drinking wine and playing cards under oil lamps. We’d cook on a camping-gas cooker and get water from the spring – it was literally camping indoors.’
The couple then turned the problem of having no power into a bonus for them, courtesy of Hadrian Electrical Ltd, a company based in Hexham that specialises in the installation and servicing of wind turbines.
At a cost of £40,000, they put in a 6.5kw turbine that feeds a large bank of batteries housed in an outbuilding. There is also a generator for back-up if the batteries become run down.
Since 2012, the system has produced some 29,000kw of power, which has meant not only £3,480 worth of free electricity but also a payment of £8,500 from the Government’s Feed-In Tariff. Owners of the house, which is on the market with Finest Properties for £495,000, can claim from this tariff in the same way for the next 16 years.
A former powder house – used to store explosives for the local lead mines – is now the outbuilding that houses the management system for the wind turbine, battery bank and back-up generator. Water, meanwhile, comes from a mixture of rain-harvesting and from the spring at the side of the house. ‘Being self-sufficient has given us our most memorable moments in the house,’ says Charlie. ‘You never forget the first time you see water running clear from a tap or when you turn on a switch and you get light from your own turbine.’
Structurally, the couple changed the cottage by knocking down an old cowshed and adding a storm porch and making an extension with a study, utility room and boot room.
‘The idea is that as you move through the house, you go from a purely functional area, to a kitchen, which still has a rugged feel to it, to the more comfortable sitting room, and finally to a decorous family room, for entertaining,’ says Charlie. Upstairs there’s a master bedroom, two further double bedrooms and a bathroom.
SUNNYSIDE has been the couple’s home since they retired in 2012. Theirs sounds like an idyllic existence – walking the dog on the moors, doing voluntary work at a lead-mining museum five miles away, and visiting English Heritage sites. Groceries are delivered, and if they yearn for a high street they drive to the local towns of Allendale or Hexham, which are, respectively, ten and 20 miles away.
The cottage has a rough-hewn charm and stunning moorland views pour in through every window.
So why, after all this hard work, do they want to leave?
‘We have grandchildren and we are too cut off from them here,’ says Charlie.
‘The house has served its purpose. It has been a buffer – something I could give all my enthusiasm to – as a substitute for Army life. Now it’s time to be nearer the young ones.’