Hannah Hauxwell cottage now up for auction

Hannah Hauxwell’s cottage in Cotherstone, which was on the market for £160,000, is now set to go under the hammer with a guide price of less than half the original asking price.Bidding will start at £75,000 for the semi-detached property, which is in need of renovation.Three-bedroom Bellview cottage, which Hannah retired to in 1988 after leaving her farm, is to be sold at auction by Savills in London on May 29. (Read more on Hannah Hauxwell’s farm and its renovation)

Sale prompted by Hannah's death

Its sale was prompted by Hannah’s death, aged 91, in January last year. (Read more on Hannah's funeral)Although she moved to a care home in 2016, she kept the cottage in Cotherstone, which is near Barnard Castle.She moved in after bidding an emotional farewell to her remote Dales farm. The scene was captured in YTV’s documentary film “A Winter Too Many”.Viewers were in tears at what was a heartbreaking moment for Hannah, then 62. Low Birk Hatt had been in her family for generations, though she had lived there on her own since the age of 34.Her father died when she was 10 and when her mother and uncle passed away, she continued caring for her cattle in the harshest of weathers, living and sleeping in one room of her farmhouse, which had no electricity or running water.

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Hannah Hauxwell at Low Birk Hatt, BaldersdaleDefinitive high resolution scan from original neg.

Hannah loved CotherstoneSoftly spoken and ever cheerful, she collected drinking water from a stream. Her only source of heat was an old stove and she lived on £240 a year until the first in a series of documentaries about her life, “Too Long a Winter” was aired in 1973 (click for film footage.) Workers in a local factory fundraised to connect her to the grid and, later, royalties from the books about her life helped boost her income.Moving from the Baldersdale farm, hidden away in Yorkshire’s old North Riding, now part of County Durham, was traumatic but she was pleased with her new home, a cottage in the nearby village of Cotherstone.Savills say: “It has all the potential to make a lovely family home.”For details contact Savills Auctions tel: 0208 012 3054