HISTORIC HOUSE RIGHT ON TRACK
Home goes on market with its own railway platform
I T’S a six-bedroom mansion in the mountains that Oliver Cromwell once stayed at – and it has its own private railway platform.
And if you’ve got £795,000 down the back of the sofa it could be yours.
Owner Huw Jenkins is selling up after 13 years so he can move to the coast with his wife Sue.
“For us living here was about having an adventure, making a break and doing something out of the ordinary,” the 62-year-old said.
“I think it will appeal to someone wanting to have an adventure, maybe someone passionate about steam trains, someone who wants to be surrounded by nature.
“If you like walking and being in the country and like historic places it could be for you.”
The property, called Plas y Dduallt, is on the market for £795,000.
It sits on the Ffestiniog Railway, built in 1836 to carry slate 13 miles from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog for export.
The private platform, complete with signal box, was built in 1965 by then-owner of the house Colonel Andrew Campbell.
“I probably use the train maybe four or five times a year, not as often as Colonel Campbell,” dad-of-two Huw, originally from Newtown, Powys, said.
“The joy is that it is always there. I cannot resist waving at the train as people go past.”
Col Campbell kept his own locomotive in a siding and ran his own train to and from Tan-y-Bwlch, six miles down the track.
He would leave his car at Tan-yBwlch station, drive his train up the line and park in the siding, before sending his shopping down to the house on an aerial hoist. Huw doesn’t do that. “It’s lovely to sit in the garden when the birds are singing away and you hear it going past. It’s fantastic.
“I’ll miss it very much, it’s become part of the blood now.”
The property is situated in a stunning location on the south-facing slopes of Moelwyn Bach, in Snowdonia .
Huw, a freelance reporter and filmmaker who runs a self-catering business, thought it would be “impossible” to live anywhere like it again.
“I’m very sad to go but I have always believed in leaving when you want more,” he said.
“It’s best to leave when you are still loving a place.
“The house is really ancient and very historic.
“We have been part of a project that has been dating old houses in Wales.
“We know the trees that were used to build it were chopped down between 1559 and 1565.”
Campbell’s Platform is strictly for the use of residents and visitors.
Officially, passengers should check with the Ffestiniog Railway Company, the oldest railway company in the world, that the train will stop at the station.
But it is a request stop. So if you stick out your arm, the engine driver should stop to let you on.
“We want to live by the coast now,” Huw said.
“My wife is a Guernsey girl and it’s time for a change.
“We’ve been here 13 years and that is longer than I have ever been in one place.
“We moved here with two young children and we brought them up in the most amazing countryside – my son was forever out building dens and finding rocks on the mountain.
“The kids went on to do really well at school and university and they have left home.
“So it’s not the family home anymore.”
Plas y Dduallt is on the market through Walter Lloyd Jones.