The best retirement money-spinners

Location: Belford, Northumberland
Guide price: £199,995
Agent: Smiths Gore, 01289 333030; smithsgore.co.uk.
A chance to live in (and modernise) a slice of stately home. This apartment, in Grade I listed Belford Hall (27 acres of grounds), needs some updating.

Location: Blockley, Gloucestershire
Guide price: £995,000
Agent: Jackson-Stops and Staff, 01386 840224; jackson-stops.co.uk.
Built in 1824, Northwick Mill still has its original mill wheel and mill stream, plus a guest annexe for when the family visit. There is an outlying workshop to escape to when they do.

Location: Bicester, Oxfordshire
Guide price: £298,000
Agent: Hamptons International, 01865 512332; hamptons-int.com.
Stable conversion, one of eight apartments in the same Grade II listed block, vaulted ceiling, original horsey features.

 

Location: Windlesham, Berkshire
Guide price: £2.4m
Agent: Barton Wyatt, 01344 843000; bartonwyatt.co.uk.
A five-bedroom gated home with its own private island and (fish-stocked) lake, plus an indoor heated swimming pool.

Location: Chieveley, Berkshire
Guide price: £895,000
Agent: Strutt and Parker, 01635 521707; struttandparker.com.
Converted stable block in need of a facelift, with five bedrooms, annexe and large gardens. Plenty of active pottering areas, too: log store, tractor store and wine store

Location: Ramsey, Essex
Guide price: £590,000
Agent: John D Wood, 01245 344222; johndwood.co.uk.
Five-bed mill house, left, with ancient windmill in garden, sails still intact. There’s an old coach house in the 2.2-acre grounds, currently used for storage.

Location: Chiddingfold, Surrey
Guide price: £795,000
Agent: Hamptons International, 01483 417222, hamptons-int.com.
One that’s already undergone extensive renovation is this characterful Gothic chapel, pictured top right. It has four bedrooms, a courtyard garden and a terrace. Well located right in the heart of the village.
 

Location: Downton, Hampshire
Guide price: £995,000
Agent: John D Wood, 01590 677233; johndwood.co.uk.
Five-bedroom Apple Court can be divided into a main house (three bedrooms) and guest annexe (two bedrooms). There’s a holiday cottage in the grounds (rental £450-£700 per week), plus a barn with potential for development into holiday lets, say the current owners. Walled gardens and a commercial nursery too.

Location: Dartmouth, Devon
Guide price: offers in excess of £2m
Agent: Savills, 01392 455755; savills.co.uk.
Perfect for the nautically minded retiree, The Keep (built 1856) is a stunning five-bedroom fortress, offering sea views, huge gardens and high stone walls.

Location: Paston, Norfolk
Guide price: £475,000
Agent: 01603 605510; abbotts.co.uk
This three-bedroom cottage comes with its own tourist attraction, a 19th century windmill. Stow Mill has been restored and is currently open to the public, complete with a gift shop. The potential is there for a vibrant business as well as a quirky place to live. 

Hovis Hill: is this the greatest street since sliced bread?

Rise to the occasion: Gold Hill was an ideal backdrop for the Hovis ad 

The chance to own a piece of Hovis Hill, featured in Britain’s best-loved television commercial, is likely to lure nostalgic house-hunters, says Max Davidson. 

The chances are you recognise the street in this picture. But you might not realise why. It is Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and it was the setting for one of the most famous British television adverts ever.

Remember that 1973 Hovis commercial starring a bread delivery boy pushing his bike up a steep cobbled hill, with Dvoˇrák’s New World symphony throbbing in the background? It was the cheesy voiceover, in a thick Mummerset accent, that lodged in the memory. “Last on my round was Old Ma Peggotty’s house. ’Twas like taking bread to the top of the world.”

In 2006, the Hovis ad was voted viewers’ all-time favourite. Not, one suspects, because people were mad about the wholesomeness of Hovis, but because they were mad about the wholesome images of village life. Nothing tugs as hard at the heartstrings as nostalgia.

Directed by Ridley Scott, who later found fame with Alien and Gladiator, the ad evoked a forgotten England of morning mist and thatched roofs, an England in which everyone had time to talk to one another and there was fresh-baked bread on every table. It gave Shaftesbury the kind of publicity most towns can only dream about.

Gold Hill had already been used as a movie location in John Schlesinger’s 1967 classic Far from the Madding Crowd, starring Julie Christie and Terence Stamp. But Hovis took it to another level altogether as an “I-know-that-street address” – good news for anyone lucky enough to own a property there.

“The television ad will certainly give the property a lot of recognition,” agrees Giles Wreford-Brown of the local agent Symonds & Sampson, which has just put number 8 Gold Hill on the market for £360,000. “Perhaps it will also add value, although it is too early to say. When the ad first came out, people assumed it had been shot somewhere in the north of England. To find a street like this in a town within commuting distance of London comes as a nice surprise. It has helped make Gold Hill a much sought-after address in a popular town.”

“Gold Hill was already known locally as Hovis Hill when I bought the cottage,” says Sue Keeling, who paid £55,000 for it in 1987. “Everyone remembered that ad.” She later sold it to her mother, who lived in the house until this January, when she moved into residential care.

For both women, it was a happy home, with rich associations. To the pleasures of living on a picture-postcard street were added the offbeat delights of owning a house on a part-time film set.

Where Ridley Scott had led, others followed. “People were always knocking on the door to ask if they could film the front door of our house,” says Sue. “Television production companies became part of street life. It made us appreciate how fortunate we were to live somewhere genuinely unique.”

The Grade II listed two-bedroom cottage, with a sloping wild garden at the back, is thought to date back to the 14th century. The building was then added to in the 17th and 20th centuries. Overlooking Blackmore Vale, with the beautiful Purbeck Hills shimmering in the distance, the dressed sandstone property would grace any town, even without the Hovis connection.

Number 8 is at the top of the steep, winding hill, which might deter some buyers. Yet the climb is worth it for the unspoilt panoramic view of one of England’s most distinctive landscapes – Hardy’s Wessex. Shaftesbury itself, thinly disguised as Shaston in Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, is on the very outer fringes of modern commuter-land. Only a very small proportion of the residents travel daily from nearby Gillingham to London’s Waterloo, which takes about two hours. But there are plenty of weekly commuters, and the town’s shops and cafés have a cosmopolitan sophistication.

You would think that fresh-baked bread would be a distant memory on Hovis Hill, and that the residents would order sliced loaves online, to be delivered to their doorstep in a supermarket van. Well, you would be wrong, certainly as far as number 8 is concerned. Until shortly before her mother moved out, Sue Keeling brought her a daily loaf of bread which she had baked herself.

With its crooked houses and cobblestones, Hovis Hill might seem like olde England, remote from the real world, but the passions that animate it are very much alive. For a romantic, it could just be the best address in Dorset.

8 Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset, is on the market for £360,000 with Symonds & Sampson (symondsandsampson.co.uk; 01258 473766)

The hill as featured in the famous Hovis ad Photo: PA

The view from Hovis Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset 

Hovis Hill also featured in Far from the Madding Crowd starring Julie Christie

Fabulous fifties back in style

Crème de la Crème kitchen by John Lewis of Hungerford

With the Jubilee on the horizon, Caroline McGhie discovers how 2012 is embracing the look of Coronation Britain .

Suddenly, the Fifties look is the coolest, sleekest and smartest way to style your home. It blows away Victorian fussiness, Thirties drab, and Seventies floral, and it connects beautifully with our current love of clean, modern lines.

As Princess Elizabeth prepared for her Coronation, a storm of ideas and colours was gusting through kitchens and drawing rooms. Now we are falling in love with them all over again. Is it Diamond Jubilee fever? Are we chiming with a previous age of austerity? Or is it just that we all watch Mad Men?

What was then high-end and hard-to-get-hold-of is readily accessible now. Marks & Spencer (marksandspencer.com) has invited the old lion of the period, Sir Terence Conran, to design a collection using British materials and craftsmen, just as he and his cohorts wanted to do in the early Fifties. So young then, their work had a whiff of student idealism. Sixty years on, the look has become much more sophisticated.

The large Conran Amis sofa (from £899) is as pert and well-fed as a prize greyhound in your open-plan living room, wrapped in pure wool, available in cream, teal or grey. The Chaucer Armchair (£499-£599) is an office creature in a domestic skin, with raked back and solid wooden legs. It comes in ochre, which actually means deliciously sharp mustard. You can even buy Fifties style bookshelves, to use as room dividers. The oak Brindley Shelving Unit (£399) is designed to look like stacked, skewed boxes. And there are splay-legged coffee tables, pedestal lamps with scallop-shaped oak bases, and white fabric shades.

The design studio at John Lewis (johnlewis.com), never knowingly left behind, has been working on its own retro designs for the past year and a half. It has gone back to Ercol, makers of the iconic bentwood tables and chairs of the Fifties, and asked them to recreate their classics (Chiltern chair, £199, table £499).

Matthew Hilton furniture from John Lewis

“It’s so exciting to see it come alive again. We’re proud that it’s British,” says Jason Wilary-Attew, head of furniture buying at John Lewis. “There was a real belief then that the future was bright, and we’re harking back to that positivity.” 

 

Matthew Hilton has also produced designs for the store, with a weighty mid-century feel (Case Metropolis sofa range, £499-£1,300). Jason says these are distinguished by their “solid wood, proper joints, and expert craftsmanship ”.

Why all the charcoal and cream, when all the colours of a child’s crayon set burst open during the Fifties? Neutral colours on big items open up choice for customers, apparently. “You can drop in oranges or acid greens on cushions, then when you’re tired of them, you change them but keep the stylish furniture,” Jason says.

The 1950s kitchen is characterised by formica, cream gloss paint where sticky fingers might go, herbs and fruit on the wallpaper, and Omo under the sink. As Woman’s Own described it: “This is the room more than any other you love to keep shining and bright. A woman’s place? Yes it is! For it is the heart and centre of the meaning of home.”

Sixty years ago, there was a discrepancy between highbrow designs and everyday living, as Susannah Walker found while writing 1950s Modern, a Shire book to be published later this year. “A three-piece suite represented your married life,” she says. “You had to have something solid enough to last the length of your marriage. People didn’t necessarily go for the spindly wooden-legged look, as they thought it wasn’t substantial enough.”

The bright colours made her retinas hurt. “There were wild pinks, limes, mustards, which were astonishing.” Day-glo accessories — lamps, magazine stands, telephone tables — are what we often regard as Fifties kitsch, and are as collectable now as they were then. In response, Cath Kidston (cathkidston.com) has devised a Jubilee kitsch all her own, with tea-towels (£10), plates (£15), mugs (£8), oilcloth tablecloths (£35) and aprons (£20) in red-white-and-blue with images of the Queen, crowns, corgi s and Union flags.

Chair by Ercol Chiltern, available at John Lewis

So popular is the retro look that sales of the John Lewis of Hungerford’s Crème de la Crème kitchen doubled in 2011. It is based on the 1953 English Rose design, built by CSA Industries using aluminium left over from Spitfire noses. Today’s are made of hand-polished wood (from £17,000, john-lewis.co.uk). Jo Adlam and her husband, Ben Harrold, have just had one fitted in their one-bedroom fisherman’s cottage in Brancaster Staithe, Norfolk. “It’s a mini one, in pale blue, very sleek, modernist, not too beach-hut in colour, but with a hint of kitsch,” Jo says.

The Jubilee has revived a sense of pride in Britishness. Horrockses, which started selling ready-to-wear dresses, housecoats and beachwear in 1946, have come back this year with bed linen using some of the designs from dresses of the Forties and Fifties. The fabric design of a day dress worn by the Queen, with tiny pink roses and yellow stripes, is reproduced as a limited edition cushion (see offer ) and scarf. The cushion bears a photograph of the Queen wearing the dress on her 1954 Commonwealth Tour.

Horrockses is giving away 20 limited-edition Jubilee cushions. Enter by May 27 to Horrockses, Brookmann Home Ltd, 5 Universal Square, Devonshire St, Manchester M12 6JH or online at horrocksesfashions.co.uk, answering this: which year did the Queen make her first Commonwealth Tour? The first 20 correct answers drawn out will win. Winners will be informed on June 1.

Shire Publications is offering a 30 per cent discount on all books, including The 1950s Kitchen and The 1950s Home. Visit shirebooks.co.uk or call 01206 256002, quoting “Telegraph offer”.

Pulling the plug: a sustainably built, off-grid farmhouse

Creating a double-height living space brings extra light into the sitting area

A carefully planned 17th-century conversion is not only sustainably built, but off-grid, too. 

No utility bills. No payment demands for gas, electricity, water or telephone lines. Sounds utopian, doesn’t it? Yet it’s a reality for Paul and Tessa Priestman because the old Northumberland farmhouse they have renovated is off-grid. 'The only bill we pay is to the council,’ Paul says. 'And if anything happened to Britain’s utilities, we’d be blissfully unaware.’

The Priestmans’ project began six years ago when they decided to plant a new woodland. As co-founder and director of a London-based design consultancy, Priestmangoode, which recently set up an office in China, Paul’s regular international travel was making him think about his carbon footprint. 'I wanted to put something back,’ he says. Finding a 200-acre plot in Northumberland, where Tessa has family roots, seemed like serendipity. 'It was larger than we originally planned but slap in the middle was a ruined farmhouse dating from 1600, and I immediately saw its potential,’ Paul says.

The semi-fortified farmhouse perches on a sweeping valley with wide-open views towards the Cheviot Hills. Derelict for many years, one end of the building originally housed cattle and a dairy while the owners lived upstairs. Water came from two wells; a stream runs through the land.

Permission was granted by the council to plant 60,000 saplings, towards which the Forestry Commission (which specified native species including oak, ash, holly, hawthorn and beech) offered a grant. Cost wasn’t a primary consideration, though. 'We wanted to get the land back to how it was before anyone set foot on it,’ Paul says.

Rebuilding the farmhouse for holiday use also required planning consent. 'I worked closely with local planning officers, architects and even an archaeologist because it’s adjacent to the site of an Iron Age fort,’ Paul says. 'Consent took ages because the land is partly in Northumberland National Park. We weren’t allowed to change the house exterior, but this didn’t matter since we wanted it to melt into the landscape.

'Being off-grid, it was vital the house should run efficiently. I’ve always been interested in sustainability in my work.’ Over the past 25 years Priestmangoode has designed homeware, trains, hotels and cruise ships, so Paul has had good experience putting sustainable ideas into practice. 'And the idea that we could enjoy a carbon-neutral holiday here became increasingly viable.’

The star of the home is the wood-burning Rayburn, used for cooking and heating water, and a super-efficient tank upstairs stores hot water for radiators and taps. An industrial generator in an adjacent outhouse is powered by liquid petroleum gas (LPG) stored in an underground tank. This kicks in for a couple of hours every two days with the energy stored in a huge bank of batteries. The generator is controlled by an inverter (a kind of computer), which keeps the batteries topped up. The external walls, made from the original stone, insulation and plasterboard, are more than a metre thick (more than five times the thickness of those of an average Victorian house). Combined with double-glazing, it provides effective insulation. In addition to this an LPG gas boiler runs the central heating when the temperature in the house drops below a certain level.

'The whole house is low-energy,’ Tessa says. 'There’s no electric kettle, toaster, hairdryer or television, although we do have a portable radio. We find it’s more labour-intensive to be carbon-neutral but also more satisfying.’

Employing builders who worked with locally sourced materials has also boosted its green credentials. Now the stone building evokes a sense of peaceful permanence. Its remote position means you hear no planes or cars – only birds, and the susurration of wind in the rapidly growing trees.

'It’s the atmosphere that counts and that’s created by all the little details,’ Paul says. 'With careful design you can make something beautiful and enjoyable that is also sustainably built to last.’

Creating an off-grid, sustainable house
• Electricity is generated using an industrial generator powered by LPG (liquid petroleum gas). Off-grid advice and installation from Inherent Energy: inherentenergy.co.uk.
• We use a wood-burning Rayburn for all heating, cooking and hot water for the radiators and taps. Hot water is stored in a hot water cylinder (rayburn-web.co.uk).
• Our water comes from a borehole and is pumped automatically into a small, pressurised holding tank. Advice and installation from Dunelm Well Drilling: dunelm.co.uk.
• A small product called Waterpebble – a Priestmangoode design – in the shower monitors water usage and encourages you to use less each time by indicating when you should finish showering (waterpebble.com).
• We installed a non-powered treatment plant, sunk into the ground, which uses natural organisms to dispose of waste. Biorock Treatment Unit: biorock-uk.com.
• The only ceiling lights are in the kitchen. We fitted separate lighting circuits operated by a single switch so the lamps in each room can all be switched on or off simultaneously.
• We fitted Jetmaster fires in both sitting areas. They’re efficient and direct heat into the rooms rather than up the chimney (jetmaster.co.uk).
• A naturally cooled larder was created with wall vents that open on to the exterior. It is kept cool through convection and fresh air drawn through the larder to the Rayburn.
• We used reclaimed materials. The tables and benches are made from recycled oak (oakbeamuk.com; hadley-reclaimed.co.uk).
• We used local businesses and materials
to cut transport costs and energy consumption (csmarchitects.co.uk; dpbuilders.co.uk).
priestmangoode.com

Eco living: tackling fuel poverty

Storm in a teacup: the so-called 'conservatory tax’ will only apply to large extensions

Fuel bills are now such an enormous part of household budgets that nearly half of all householders (48 per cent) say they are planning to make cutbacks, either by under-heating their homes, reducing social engagements or even cutting back on food and clothing to pay their energy bills, according to new research.

A survey of nearly 1,300 adults for the charity Consumer Focus found that four out of 10 people say their winter energy bills were higher this year than last, despite using less gas because of the mild winter.

In addition, fuel poverty is rising so fast that the number of households suffering from it will rise from one in four to one in three (nine million homes), according to one definition of fuel poverty, by 2016. Even if you don’t suffer from fuel poverty yourself, you will know someone, maybe an elderly relative or neighbour, or a family with young children, who can’t properly heat their home and will probably be suffering from some kind of health problem as a result.

Well, you may say, isn’t the “Green Deal”, launching this autumn, going to solve the problem? For those unaware of it, the Green Deal is a government scheme that will enable householders to tap into long-term funding of several thousand pounds to make energy improvements to their homes. The scheme’s “golden rule” is that the loan repayments will be lower than the savings households make on reduced bills.

It hit the headlines when it was revealed that home owners who build extensions or large conservatories will be mandated to improve the overall energy efficiency of their homes, using Green Deal funds if required – the “conservatory tax”.

If you’ll excuse the mixed metaphors, the “conservatory tax” is both a storm in a teacup and a red herring. Frankly, if you are building an extension, or a conservatory more than 30 sq m in size, it makes sense to spend a little more on energy efficiency measures that will benefit your whole house, keep it warmer and reduce fuel bills.

The real questions we need to ask about the Green Deal are: how can the Government guarantee that any savings made by householders through energy efficiency measures won’t be gobbled up during the period of the Green Deal loan by inflation-busting rises in fuel bills? Will the Green Deal do anything to help the millions of households in fuel poverty?

Jenny Holland, parliamentary campaigner for the Association for the Conservation of Energy, says that going by energy companies’ records, fuel bill savings will be rapidly overtaken by energy price hikes. As for tackling fuel poverty, she says it is highly unlikely that fuel-poor households will want, or be able to, take out Green Deal loans: “Low-income households have often had bad and bruising experiences with debt and won’t want to take on additional loans. From the other side, Green Deal providers who will be looking to get their investment back will avoid these vulnerable households like the plague.”

So what is the solution? A coalition of politicians and energy campaigners believe they have one. From next year, the Treasury will begin to receive billions of pounds of revenue from the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme which the Energy Bill Revolution campaign says should be used to target energy efficiency measures at households in fuel poverty.

While energy campaigners such as Consumer Focus think the Green Deal will help many middle-income households who want to improve their homes’ energy efficiency without any upfront costs, they say only a radical solution, like the one proposed by the Energy Bill Revolution, will help low-income households unable to take advantage of Green Deal funds. Surely it is high time we ended the national disgrace that 7,800 people in this country die every year simply because their homes are too cold.

- The campaign to insulate the homes of the fuel poor: energybillrevolution.org
- Buildings Research Establishment: bre.co.uk
- Association for the Conservation of Energy: ukace.org
- Consumer Focus: consumerfocus.org.uk
- Green Deal: decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/tackling/green-deal/green-deal.aspx

Top 20 Olympic torch relay towns

The flame is lit. After all the years of waiting, the Olympic torch begins its winding journey through the United Kingdom towards London. Along the way it will pass through 1,019 communities and travel 8,000 miles, carried by 9,000 people. The torch leaves Land’s End and eventually reaches the Olympic Stadium. In between, it will shine its light on some hidden parts of the country – and some terrific places to buy property.

Estate agents are hoping that the surge of national goodwill will give house-hunters the same get-up-and-go that Team GB will carry into the Games on July 27.

Here is our pick of the best places to buy property on the route. Some are hidden gems, others are bargains near well-known areas. Together they show the best of what Britain has to offer.

1 Penzance
Cornwall 19 May
The town now has an arts quarter, several Good Food Guide-approved restaurants, a sleeper rail link with London and a helicopter to the Scilly Isles. Little wonder its property is a showcase for the best of the West Country. House types range from “sought-after historical mansions on Chapel Street, to smaller town cottages and country retreats”, says Bradleys estate agent Mike Howard. A typical three-bedroom house here costs £300,000.

Insider tip There are hefty premiums for homes overlooking the sweeping Mount’s Bay and beautiful St Michael’s Mount.
For sale A four-bedroom 18th-century house, extended to include a barn. £550,000 from Bradleys (01736 360605; bradleys-estate-agents.co.uk).

2 Glastonbury
Somerset May 22
Forgotten outside festival time, this shabby-chic area is just 15 miles off the M5 and 120 miles from London. It is one of the West Country’s best-value locations and much cheaper than Devon. A three-bedroom house costs £200,000. Second-home owners and tourists often rush past en route to more established West-Country hot spots.

Insider tip “The best properties are in the villages of West Compton, North Wootton, Pilton, Ditcheat and East Pennard,” says George Wade of buying agency Property Vision.
For sale Abbots Leigh is a four-bedroom mansion, once part of Glastonbury Abbey, with a two-bedroom garden house. £1.6 million with Knight Frank (01935 812236; knightfrank.com).

3 Ludlow
Shropshire May 24
Value for money is key at the yearly food fairs and in the property market. “Prices are back to their 2007 peak,” says Kevin Boulton of Strutt & Parker. Yet a three-bedroom house still averages £220,000.

Insider tip Plan well ahead. Ludlow only has 11,000 residents, and agents have a waiting list of people who want to buy. Keep in touch with local estate agents in the know, such as Nock Deighton (01584 875555; nockdeighton.co.uk) and Chesterton Humberts (01584 877778; chestertonhumberts.com).

For sale A three-bedroom, three-bathroom oak-framed house close to the town centre is £410,000 through Samuel Wood & Company (01584 875207; samuelwood.co.uk).

4 Carmarthen
Carmarthenshire May 27
The town has a newly regenerated centre, and is surrounded by some of Wales’s most beautiful countryside. Yet after gentle price falls since 2011, a typical three-bedroom house is just £160,000.

Insider tip If you want a property with land, look to villages such as Llanarthney and Nantgaredig.
For sale A four-bedroom farmhouse overlooking Towy Valley, with 84 acres of land plus equestrian facilities. £850,000 from Clee (01267 230645; ctf-uk.com) and Knight Frank (01432 273087; knightfrank.com).

5 Chester
Cheshire May 29-30
“This is a vibrant town, with an attractive variety of architecture,” says Jessica Brown of Strutt & Parker. “King Street has the sweetest period homes. Other pretty areas are Curzon Park, with views over the racecourse, and Dee Banks, with views towards the river.”

Insider tip The most popular villages for commuters are Christleton and Waverton.
For sale Charming, listed three-bedroom house with courtyard garden. £450,000 from Strutt & Parker (01244 354888; struttandparker.com).

6 Douglas
Isle of Man June 3
The Olympic torch is going around the island on a TT bike, but most of the year this is a quiet, semi-rural retreat. It is also a tax haven, hence the high prices. A three-bedroom home is £450,000, but there is stardust too: Jeremy Clarkson, Russell Grant and Rick Wakeman live here.

Insider tip An electric railway crosses the island, and homes near stops carry premiums.
For sale A renovated five-bedroom manor house with more than three acres of land near the capital, Douglas is £1.2million, (Fine & Country; 01624 693412, fineandcountry.com).

7 Belfast
Northern Ireland June 3
For a leafy, comfortable capital city, Belfast is excellent value. A three-bedroom house typically costs £150,000, up 40 per cent in the last decade. The market has “lots of positive signs”, with viewings and offers rising, according to Trevor Dougan of Shiells Residential agency.

Insider tip This city has a high number of repossessions, so look for bargain buys.
For sale A recently restored five-bedroom house in the affluent suburb of Malone, in 1.2 acres is £1.98 million with Templeton Robinson (028 9066 3030; templetonrobinson.co.uk).

8 Bangor
Co Down June 3
The torch relay may put this beautiful seaside resort on the map. It has a large marina and high-quality Victorian houses. A typical three-bedroom home here, with a stunning water view, is well under £250,000.

Insider tip Apartments near Bangor Marina, one of the biggest in Ireland, are the most sought-after.
For sale With waterside views to the Antrim Hills, this four-bedroom house has gardens front and back. £695,000, Templeton Robinson (028 9042 4747; templetonrobinson.co.uk).

9 Glasgow
Scotland June 8
You can get a three-bedroom home here for just £135,000, but prices vary sharply. The revamped Merchant City, near the centre, is the most sought-after spot for flats. Lettings agents across the city are gearing up for high-value rentals in the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Insider tip A recent Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ report suggests an oversupply of homes on sale, so prices may be set to dip in the short term. Wait until after the summer to see if bargains emerge.
For sale One, two and three-bedroom flats are for sale in a listed sandstone building in the heart of the centre. From £140,000 with Rettie & Co (0141 248 4160; rettie.co.uk).

10 Aberdeenshire
Scotland June 11-12
This area has it all. Handsome town houses in the Granite City, rolling countryside, and the sporting haven of the Cairngorms. Not to mention the Queen’s estate at Balmoral. But prices are low: three-bedroom houses start at only £140,000.

Insider tip Prices of many rural homes are pushed up by hunting or fishing rights.
For sale A seven-bedroom baronial mansion house with 182 acres of farmland and salmon fishing rights is £2.3 million with Rettie & Co (0131 624 4074; rettie.co.uk).

11 Alnwick
Northumberland June 14-15
The whole county is keenly priced. A typical three-bedroom house is £225,000. “People come here because they can be near a dramatic coastline,” says Samuel Gibson of Strutt & Parker. There is also a high-speed rail link to London.

Insider tip Local agents say homes with a sea view carry a 25 per cent premium.
For sale An attractive four-bedroom villa with landscaped gardens and a large garage is £650,000 with Strutt & Parker (01670 516123; struttandparker.com).

12 Pickering
North Yorkshire June 18
The home of ITV1’s Heartbeat is a tourist hot spot, with a steam railway, a castle and lovely North Yorkshire countryside. Property is good value; you can buy a pretty cottage from about £160,000.

Insider tip Pickering’s 12th-century church is its finest building. Homes with views of it carry a premium, but if you go to the west side of the town, homes are cheaper.
For sale A pretty 18th-century three-bedroom stone cottage, laden with original features. Prices start from £345,000 through Savills (01904 617820; savills.com).

13 Ripon
North Yorkshire June 19
“Buyers get more for their money north of Harrogate,” says Alice Loates of Strutt & Parker. “Families are drawn by good schools. The cathedral has plenty going on and Ripon racecourse attracts thousands of visitors,” she says. A three-bedroom home typically costs £245,000.

Insider tip Improvements to the A1 have made rural areas around Fountains Abbey and Studley deer park more accessible. Local house prices are tipped to rise as a result.
For sale A Victorian villa with five bedrooms, outbuildings, river frontage and grounds including an orchard is £975,000 with Strutt & Parker (01423 561274; struttandparker.com).

14 Ambleside
Cumbria June 21
By north-of-England standards £375,000 for a three-bedroom house is a high price to pay, but similar views elsewhere would cost more. “This market town attracts people from all over the world. Views from an elevated property can be 360 degrees,” says Andrew Holmes of estate agent Carter Jonas.

Insider tip Walking holidays mean the town is busy year-round, so choose carefully if you want privacy and quiet.
For sale A substantial eight-bedroom, 17th-century lodge on the outskirts of town, with paddocks and 3.5 acres of grounds is £1.25 million with Carter Jonas (01539 722592; carterjonas.co.uk).

15 Bakewell
Derbyshire June 29
Famous for its tarts, this tourist hot spot has a growing number of attractive modern apartments in the town centre. A three-bedroom house, with views of the glorious Peak District, will cost £230,000.

Insider tip Check winter access – the town and nearby villages routinely get cut off in snowy weather.
For sale A five-bedroom house in two acres of grounds with separate annexe and indoor pool is £1.85m with Fine & Country (0114 276 7436; fineandcountry.com).

16 Uppingham
Rutland July 3
This prime East Midlands spot is cheaper than blingier places in the West Midlands, such as Sutton Coldfield. The town is famous for its schools, whose veterans include Stephen Fry, Hugh Jackman and Phil Spencer. In nearby Oakham, an average three-bedroom house will be £325,000.

Insider tip Uppingham has been developed in rings. There are stone period homes in the centre, converted barns and farmhouses, and new-build estates on the outskirts.
For sale In the nearby countryside sits this four-bedroom rectory with almost 1.5 acres of grounds. £850,000 through Carter Jonas (01733 588688; carterjonas.co.uk).

17 Hatfield
Hertfordshire July 8
It might not have quite the same history as nearby St Albans, but Hatfield’s property has most of that town’s benefits for just a fraction of the price. “It’s 20 miles north of London with excellent road and rail links, a good choice of shops and superb leisure facilities,” explains Mark Shearing of estate agency Putterills. A three-bedroom house here is a snip at £245,000.
Insider tip: Buy in south Hatfield for the easiest access to London.

18 Hythe
Kent July 18
Forget Brighton’s bling. Hythe is a good value, quiet Cinque Port with an unspoilt promenade. Homes here enjoy clear Channel views. Three-bedroom waterside properties start from £350,000.
Insider tip This is a commuter hot-spot to come, so now’s a good time to buy.

For sale A timber-framed Georgian house with four bedrooms, many period features and a pretty garden is £445,000 with Smith-Woolley & Perry (01303 226622; swandp.co.uk).

19 Greenwich
South-east London July 21
This is the smart part of good-value south London, yet there is an understated, villagey feel. It is less brash than Lewisham or Lambeth, and has excellent rail links to central London and farther south. A three-bedroom home is £500,000 upwards.

Insider tip Homes with views of the heath command a 20 per cent premium, so the best value can be found a few streets back.
For sale Once occupied by William Wilberforce, this 18th-century house has 5,200 sq ft of space over five floors, with eight bedrooms and a large walled garden. £3.95 million from Cluttons (020 7407 3669; cluttons.com).

20 Westminster
Central London July 26
This is the closest residential area to The Mall, famous for Buckingham Palace, Trooping the Colour and, of course, the beach volleyball during the Olympics. It isn’t cheap, but values have risen 15 per cent in the past year and look set to continue, so you are unlikely to lose money. A three-bedroom home in this area will be at least £1.25 million.

Insider tip Most homes here are sold privately, so hire a buying agent, such as Sourcing Property (sourcingproperty.co.uk). The price, usually £1,000 up front and then one to two per cent of the purchase price, will be worth it to find the right home in this hot local market. After all, even Usain Bolt still has a trainer.
For sale Watch the torch relay from the roof garden of this six-bedroom house with its own gym and cinema room. £32.5 m with Savills (savills.com) and Strutt & Parker (struttandparker.com).

The best houseboats for sale

1. London
Location: Greenwich
Guide Price: £175,000
Agent: London Tideway, 020 7978 6285, londontideway.com
This 68ft one-bedroom Dutch barge, built in 1905 is in good condition throughout. It has modern fittings, including central heating, a wood burner, galley kitchen, timber flooring and a spiral staircase. There is a large deck, and the vessel also boasts a secure residential mooring in Greenwich. A perfect floating base for the Olympics.

2. London
Location: Southwark
Guide Price: £155,000
Agent: Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, 020 7231 3800, kfh.co.uk
You get a lot for your money on this distinctive white boat, moored right in the heart of the capital. There are three bedrooms, two shower rooms and almost 900 sq ft of living space set out across two levels. But in addition to the deck area, there are two large reception rooms as well as two substantial galleys. It would be an excellent venue for holding parties.

3. Berkshire
Location: Ascot
Guide Price: £10,062 per week
Agent: Knight Frank, 01344 299399, knightfrank.com
You can hire this houseboat during the Olympics, although it may be cheaper to make your own gold medals. There are four bedrooms, each with underfloor heating, and an upper deck with picture windows and panoramic views of the Thames. If you forsake the joys of Stratford, you could just laze on the split-level sundecks or sit in the Jacuzzi on the upper level.

4. West Sussex
Location: Chichester
Guide Price: £185,000
Agent: King & Chasemore, 01243 624150, kingandchasemore.co.uk
This two-bedroom houseboat built six years ago boasts views from its mooring across Salterns Lock to the Chichester Channel. The vessel is 54ft long, has mains water, electricity and double glazing. And for landlubbers, there is car-parking space, too.

5. London
Location: Chiswick
Guide Price: £175,000
Agent: Faron Sutaria, 020 8994 4111, faronsutaria.co.uk
Tenacious is 56ft long, with maple floors and oak fittings, open-plan living area, galley kitchen and family bathroom with corner bath. It also has two large terraces and a pair of bedrooms – one double, one twin. The deck area alone is more than 380 sq ft. The generous storage room inside could be used for sun-loungers or a barbecue. Mooring not included.

6. London
Location: Chelsea
Guide Price: £1m
Agent: Harrods Estates, 020 7225 6506, harrodsestates.com.
From the Forties until recently, this was a ferry which carried passengers across a lake in Switzerland. Now it is for sale with a 21st-century price tag. There is a mahogany deck and a communal area, which can take 60 people. There is only one formal bedroom, yet the vessel could be modified to have three if the new owner feels all at sea without them.

7. Cambridgeshire
Location: Wyton
Guide Price: £120,000
Agent: Waters Edge Homes, 01932 240202, watersedgehomes.co.uk
This is a floating lodge, formerly part of Hartford Marina on the outskirts of Cambridge. The star here is the private waterside terrace and 76ft mooring. Unlike some houseboats in this area, you can live here all year-round. But there is easy access to the River Great Ouse if you want a taste of water-bound freedom.

8. Surrey
Location: Shepperton
Guide Price: £130,000
Agent: Waters Edge Homes, 01932 240202, watersedgehomes.co.uk
This houseboat is brand new, with oak floors and doors, an open-plan kitchen, modern bathroom and two double bedrooms. A decked walkway on three sides gives good views of the Thames, while nearby there is parking for two cars.

9. Surrey
Location: Sunbury-on-Thames
Guide Price: £109,950
Agent: Waters Edge Homes, 01932 240202, watersedgehomes.co.uk
This roomy houseboat comes without a mooring, so buyers would have to decide where on Britain’s waterways they would like to make their home. The vessel has two large bedrooms, with a triple-aspect lounge leading to a fully enclosed conservatory. There is central heating, too.

London
Location: Bermondsey
Guide Price: £325,000
Agent: Chesterton Humberts, 020 7357 7999, chestertonhumberts.com
London houseboats may not be cheap, but they come with flexible access to one of the world’s great cities. This two-bedroom steel Dutch  barge is 99 years old, but was fully refurbished in 2006. It now boasts more than 800 sq ft of living space. There is even diesel-fired central heating.

Coronation street revival for the Jubilee

Jane and Dean Sanders, and three of their children, outside Angling Spring Photo: John Lawrence

Jane Sanders doesn’t just live in a Fifties house, she also embraces the decade’s lifestyle, says Caroline McGhie 

Jane Sanders is fascinated not just by the house she lives in, but by the period in which it was built, and by the woman who was its first owner. A Miss Eastwood, unmarried and in her forties, planned the house in 1952, the year of the Queen’s accession, and moved into it in 1954.

Angling Spring, named after the woods behind it, originally had two bedrooms and two slate-shelved larders – one for pots and pans, the other for dry foodstuffs. Jane, who shares the now enlarged house with her husband, Dean, and their five children, has fully entered into the spirit of the place. She wears period aprons, just like housewives in advertisements of the period, a time when women were adjusting to the new world of fridges, food-mixers, Bakelite and Coronation chicken.

“Miss Eastwood was a mistress at a private school, very involved in the Red Cross, quite fearsome,” Jane says. “She never threw away a pair of stockings, a newspaper, a used light bulb or leftover soap. She had a real wartime mentality. Back then, you never knew what could be useful in the future. It was all still here when we moved in 16 years ago.”

But who in their right mind would buy a poorly insulated and energy-hungry Fifties house? “The estate agent advised against, as I had two small boys and was due to give birth again. It had no heating apart from paraffin stoves, and it was cold. There was an old oven but no fridge. But it just had a lovely feeling.”

As with other houses built in the post-war years, when land was plentiful but building supplies scarce, Angling Spring was cube-shaped and set in an ample plot. This made it ideal for extension, and the Sanders family now have seven bedrooms and a big kitchen.

“I feel very sad that we didn’t use Crittall windows, which we should have done, but they are so expensive now,” says Jane. “The kitchen had one cupboard so we asked a carpenter to make a run of them in the same style. I don’t need a fitted kitchen. And when we renewed the bath, we put linoleum down. Mottled green.” She was determined to keep Miss Eastwood’s larders and to preserve the parquet floors. She also began to collect Fifties bits and pieces. “I have a bit of furniture from my grandma, a bookshelf which my uncle made, a glass-fronted cabinet, an umbrella stand in the hall, some original Fifties posters encouraging people to see England by rail and a lovely vase,” she says. 

Farnley Hey, while hinting at Le Corbusier and Lloyd Wright, typifies the best of the Fifties with its lightness, open-plan design and sense of optimism Photo: Tim Crocker

The children, now aged from 11 to 21, have grown up knowing nothing else. When their parents took them to the Imperial War Museum, they moaned that everything there looked exactly like home. Now the family is selling through Savills (01494 725636) at £1.4m.

Well might we gasp at the way prices have soared. In the Fifties, most people rented. Only 25 per cent of the population owned their own homes, and the average house price, according to analysis by Savills and Nationwide, was £1,891. In 2012,the average is £162,722. Therefore, according to Savills, during the Queen’s reign we have seen an increase of 8,505 per cent. The home is now the largest asset any family is likely to own, status-defining and aspirational.

The Queen herself was moving house in 1952, and coming to terms with the death of her father.

She swapped an apartment in Clarence House for Buckingham Palace, although the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret had to be tactfully moved out of the palace first. According to Ben Pimlott’s biography of the Queen, Prince Philip found many vintage bottles of wine to enjoy in the maze of cellars below.

It was then, too, that Terence Conran, 21 years old and bursting to break out of the austerity years, launched Conran & Company, with workshops in the basement below the Ballet Rambert. He had worked on the interior of a flying boat at the 1951 Festival of Britain, including a design covered in vaguely phallic motifs, which his mother thought looked like a series of signs indicating “this way to the gents”. No one could have known that within a decade he would be selling us chicken bricks, garlic crushers, glass tables and paper lampshades.

It was a period on the edge of dramatic change. Already architects in the United States were doing jaw-dropping things with glass and steel, and some of it crept in here. The architect Peter Wormsley designed Farnley Hey in Farnley Tyas, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, which is being sold at £699,500 by The Modern House (08456 344068). The property is almost as it was then. “In style, Framley Hey suggests the influence of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, brought to a dramatic site in the Pennines,” says English Heritage. “It typifies the best of the Fifties in its lightness, sense of picturesque and optimistic stance.” 

The original fireplace has been retained.  Photo: John Lawrence

The house sparkles with floor-to-ceiling windows, floors of camphorwood and Yorkshire stone.
Lemon-yellow Formica is in the lavatory, and there is a dance floor with a built-in sound system.

“There was a love of new materials but also of traditional wood and natural stone,” says Albert Hill, of The Modern House. “The major change was in the open-plan spaces, the cascade of space. The dance floor is a joyous expression of post-war euphoria. They didn’t have to bring in a band. They could use new technology and have amplifiers. It became a place for play and leisure.”

Most houses, though, still harked back to the Thirties, when every room had a dedicated purpose. Penny Boff was born in 1955 into the house that her father, Laurence Jeffery, a quantity surveyor, had built in 1951 on land in Guildford, which cost £5,000. Albermarle House is classic, detached and tile-hung, with three bedrooms, a study, and living and dining rooms. “It had parquet floors, solid oak doors and skirtings, a larder and a coal storage cupboard,” says Penny. “We had baths in front of the fire downstairs in a tin tub, and my mother made strawberry teas in the garden in the summer.” As a child, she could walk to the shops whenever she liked. “Childhoods were different then. I remember it as a time of innocence.” The house is much the same (with much improved plumbing and heating) and is for sale through Hamptons (01483 502222) at £758,000.