Welcome to our ongoing blog about the restoration of our 19th century cottage and gardens in Leicestershire, England. We are Leanne and Craig and this is our journey.
Leanne is a photographer, and until 2023 worked in the high octane world of Formula 1 as one of the handful (if that many) of permantely accredited female photgraphers on the grid; with a degree in design from Belfast she is definitly the more artistic side of us. Craig still works in the offshore survey industry, so spends half of the year working at sea all over the planet. With these careers a nice peaceful and relaxing life in an old cottage in a sleepy corner of the county was what we wanted – oh how little we knew of what was coming!
We took on the restoration of the cottage back in April 2024 (after the usual delays in completions due to hassles elswhere in the chain) and as is so often is the case, it soon became apparent that it would take quite a bit more work to get the house into the state we wanted than we had originally thought.
The rooms in the cottage date from 3 different eras and the work that will be involved in each section is radically different.
The oldest section of the house (the original 1 down-2 up cottage) still retains the downstairs ceiling beams and a lot of the original lime plasterwork over the granite stone walls and dates back to the early/mid 19th century. This plaster has seen better days though, having been covered in several layers of modern wallpaper, emulsion paint and artex over the years – this has NOT helped the plaster in any way whatsoever leaving it all quite crumbly and brittle. This main part of the house consists of The Downstairs Hallway, the Lounge, Stairway, Upstairs Hallway, Bedroom I and Bedroom III.
The next oldest section is the Kitchen, Bedroom II and the Bathroom – these rooms were built over the footprint of #25 in the early/mid 1950s. This section is in a bit better condition than the oldest part; originally built and fitted out as the lounge in the 1950s before later becoming the kitchen, it still retained a (disconnected) gas fireplace which was hiding traces of the probably original floral wallpaper. The kitchen had been fitted with a non-venting extractor fan, which has caused some damp issues in the paintwork so this was put onto a priority to-do list.
The final section of the house is the Sun-Room” which in 2005 replaced an older lean-to extension at the back of the property and the still existing outdoor toilet block. This had been built with a full width sliding door cupboard across the back wall; all this cupboard achieved was to take 1 metre of floor space away and trap stagnent air which had led to mould in the upper corners. Like the kitchen, this damp problem was put onto our priority jobs list! The first big winter storm of 2024 also showed us that the pointing on the roof was also shot after having seen trickles of water running down the inside of wall the following morning!
One of the biggest draws of the property was the gardens. Unusually, our Front Garden is split from the property by the pedestrian street infront of the house (well, technically it isn’t pedestrian, but it is so narrow that you have to be a “special” kind of driver to try getting up it – that doesn’t stop the occaisional attempt though!), this garden was added onto the propery in 1954 but follows the outline of a section of land shown on maps right back to 1815 that was likely allotments for our row of houses. The Back Garden is mostly paved or gravel covered and is STEEP as it runs up the side of Castle Hill.
The previous owner seems to have done very little work to these once magnificent grounds other than cutting the grass and a sporadic cutback, so they were in a quite poor and overgrown condition when we moved in – we’re sure we saw Velociraptor tracks in there! (more than likely just our regular badger, fox and mountjack deer visitors though 🙂 )
Hopefully you will enjoy watching our progress (and likely set-backs) over the next few years as we get our home back into the state we want.