The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Cosy home full of character
It’s a home that is straight out of a fairytale and could be your dream come true. Cheryl Livingstone speaks to the Carter family about their picturesque paradise
Woodend Farm-house and Steading is home to three generations of the Carter girls – Amanda, her daughter, Cami, and her granddaughter, Lizzie.
The family bought the property 10 years ago after moving north from Buckinghamshire. It was not the Carters’ first experience of Aberdeenshire, however, having first moved to the Granite City a few years previously for work.
They had lived in Insch before and when their journey took them back up north, they decided they wanted to find a home in a rural area that had some land with it and could be a building project for them.
Amanda, 53, who works as a teacher at Inverurie Market Place Primary School, said: “It was really by luck that we found the house. We had just missed out on a property in Mony-- musk, I was still down in England but my husband was working up here. Iwas looking online when I spotted this house for sale and he went to see it. It was ours within a month.”
At the time, the steading was unconverted and the farmhouse itself was in need of some TLC. In Amanda’s words, it had central heating “but not a lot else”.
Over the past decade, the family has transformed the farmhouse into a charming and cosy family home.
They added a beautiful kitchen, which features an Aga and an exposed wall, plus plenty of room for freestanding furniture, put double glazing in, added a sun room, which has great views out to the surrounding countryside, three bedrooms and a new bathroom upstairs plus introduced a Neville Johnson study and staircase.
The latest step in their project was to convert the steading, which is now a gorgeous three-bedroom, and three-bathroom, home which still retains its character and history.
The family had a number of ideas planned for the steading including for Cami and Lizzie to live there and future plans of using it for a B&B. These ideas could be carried on by whoever takes on the property and there is also planning permission in place to convert the west wing of the steading into another three-bedroom home.
“There is also permission to build an agricultural shed in the top field,” Amanda, who also has two other daughters, explained.
“We had thought about doing that as we have an orchard in the field and if you wanted to make your own cider and sell it, the shed would be handy. We used to have hens and sell our eggs and we used to have regular customers who would come up and buy our eggs. We also had bees and produced 35 pounds of honey one year.”
For Amanda, she said there are two rooms in the farmhouse that are the “bees knees” – the kitchen and the lounge.
She said with the Aga in the kitchen it is a warm and cosy room where you get the sun in the morning and lovely views of the surrounding fields.
“The lounge is great too because it has a woodburning stove,” she added.
“It was made for winter time really. It’s got a large picture window so you can sit and take in all the great views of the surrounding area but also of the back garden. We sometimes get deer coming into it and lots of red squirrels.”
The house has a lovely fairytale charm to it and its location only adds to the magical feel of the place. A tree-lined driveway takes you down to the farmhouse and steading where more trees line the back of the house. It feels like you are being transported to another world and looks picturesque all year round.
It offers you a lovely rural setting and yet is only 16 miles from Aberdeen and eight miles to Inverurie which both have lots of amenities including shops and pubs. You really have everything on your doorstep and yet are tucked away in a beautiful setting.
Amanda said she felt like she was “buying a bit of a dream” when she first purchased the home.
“I really couldn’t believe that we had been so lucky to find this place,” she added.
Now as the family has decided to move back down south, their magical home is on the market. It is available to buy as a whole for £910,000 or in lots.
“I would love for someone to buy it as a whole lot so they could experience it and love it the way we have,” Amanda said.
Contact: Strutt and Parker on 01330 826800. LOT 1 – Woodend Farmhouse; Offers over £495,000; includes farmhouse, driveway and around 2.67 acres of land. LOT 2 – Woodend Steading; Offers over £415,000; includes converted steading, west wing of steading and around 0.45 acres.