‘I rejuvenated a rundown inheritance’

Alexandra Abbott tells how she turned a once dilapidated Yorkshire farm into an upmarket holiday let. By Ruth Bloomfield

E‘Planning applications were me with my little sketch pad and lots of mood boards’

ddlethorpe Grange Farm has been in Alexandra Abbott’s family since her in-laws bought the 250-acre dairy farm in the 1960s. Over the years that followed Abbott and her husband, Michael, spent some of their happiest times roaming around the farm, which is four miles south of their home in the market town of Malton and at the foot of Yorkshire’s Howardian Hills.

But from the 1980s onward the farm was broken up to raise funds. In 2010 Abbott’s parents decided to buy a small piece of it for themselves: the original farmhouse, which they renovated to live in, about three acres of pasture and a collection of rundown old farm buildings.

When Abbott’s father died three years later her inheritance did not immediately seem life- changing. She was left the badly overgrown pasture, a tumbledown red-brick piggery built in about 1910, plus adjacent stables and a barn. Their roofs had collapsed and they were infested by rats and pigeons.

“I was perfectly happy to get what I got,” she says. “It was a place we loved and were invested in. The question was how were we going to create a legacy out of it which we could pass down.”

Over the next six years, Abbott drew up plans to convert the buildings into a swish, six-bedroom house.

She battled her way through the planning system, took a massive financial leap of faith, and rolled up her sleeves to work on the building site to keep costs down.

The business finally opened in December 2019 – only to be closed down by the pandemic almost immediately. But Abbott kept on plugging away, and last year it turned over £150,000.

Bookings are already strong for this year, and Alexandra and Michael, both 65, see the building as both a retirement nest egg and something to pass on to their 26-year-old daughter.

Back in 2013, Alexandra set off on her renovation journey without the help of an architect.

“I couldn’t afford one,” she says. “I did have a structural engineer, but planning applications were me with my little sketch pad and lots of mood boards.

Alexandra Abbott wanted a high-end finish and targeted large groups for her holiday let venture

I tried and tried, but all I could get was a live-work unit and I knew I wasn’t going to get a development loan for that.”

Thankfully fate threw the retired school administrator a lifeline in 2015. The Government extended permitted development rights to convert redundant agricultural buildings into homes. Suddenly Abbott was in business. “It was like manna from heaven,” she says.

By 2017 Abbott had planning permission to convert the buildings into a courtyard- style house, with pitched roofs, rustic features, huge windows and a central paved garden with a hot tub.

This allowed her to apply for a £350,000 development finance loan.

Her first big decision was to get rid of some of the buildings on the site – about 3,000 sq ft of steel- framed storage buildings, which had not stood the test of time. “They were ugly and unsafe and had rusted terribly,” she says.

This still left her with about 4,000 sq ft of red brick barns to play with, and Abbott was determined to do as much of the work as she could.

She did use professionals for wiring and plumbing, and to construct the new roof. And she didn’t feel up to the task of fitting the kitchen or the four bathrooms. But she did repoint the outside wall, build much of the interior joinery herself, decorate, and create the beautiful cottage-style garden.

“At that time I was still working at a school four days a week, and then I was working on the farm at night,” says Abbott. “It was insane. There was one day I stopped working at 4am and then had to get up at 6am again for school.”

Work continued at this punishing pace for two years and she welcomed her first guests in December 2019.

Her business strategy was to go for high- end finishes and space for large groups, and this seems to have gone down well. The building costs up to £5,270 for two nights in high summer, and £2,870 in low season and the first half of this year is almost fully booked already. Christmas and New Year have also been snapped up.

With business brisk, thanks to a combination of hen weekends, birthday celebrations, anniversary parties, and family gatherings, Abbott has been able to give up her school work to focus on running the operation.

As all owners will tell you, a holiday-let business isn’t easy money. Costs include a team of eight part-time cleaners to get the property spotless when new guests arrive. Abbott herself tends the garden, cleans the windows, and does all the maintenance and administration. She estimates she works about 70 hours a week, but treats the project as a labour of love that one day her daughter could take over.

“I always thought these buildings were the nicest part of the farm and I knew they could be turned into a fantastic house,” she says. “I could always see the potential, and I didn’t want to give up on it.”