Clare Teal: Trouble with t’mill scuppers our grand design of moving

JUST over a year ago Muddy and I fell in love with an old mill in the Cotswolds.

We weren’t looking to move but just happened to see it in the paper.

Before we knew it we’d booked a viewing for the following Tuesday. As it was only Friday we couldn’t wait that long and drove up the next day to have a look at it from afar and to check out the area.

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As luck would have it, we bumped into the owner while peering down his drive and he invited us in for a look round.

There wasn’t one thing about the building and grounds that we didn’t love. There was a small river running under the lounge with an additional stream circling the mill before joining its big brother again. The layout was perfect, it could have been built just for us. It had been on the market for some time but currently no-one was seemingly as interested as we were.

We put the flat up for sale on the Monday and put an offer in on the mill and so began the adventure. As it goes it was a rubbish adventure, we learned that you shouldn’t even bother making an offer until you’ve sold your own property. In the midst of the recession we just couldn’t sell our place in time and somebody else came along and bought our beautiful mill. Since then we haven’t really been able to settle and have constantly been on the look out for another mill-like property. After a year we’ve seen nothing and have slowly begun to realise that if the superb proportions of that lovely mill is what we want – then we might have to build something containing them ourselves. All this, whilst watching the cruciform house on Grand Designs.

I suppose you could say this is going to be a long-term project in that we haven’t found (or looked for) any land yet. Neither have we sold our flat. I have however read two articles on under floor heating, ordered a book about the history of green oak barn building. We’ve also booked our places at the Homebuilders convention held in Birmingham’s NEC at the end of March. Oh and we’ve seen some nice taps for the bathroom. Other than releasing three albums this year we’ve not much on so I’m sure we’ll be in by Christmas!

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