This gorgeous old cottage which we now call home used to be a water mill in the hazy 1600s. It was pretty much a shell when we found it - four walls and a roof - with a crop of broken outbuildings nestled nearby, but Martin and I fell in love with it and dared to dream the impossible. Then one day, Martin came home waving estate agent details in my face. The place was up for sale...
The work was interminable and some nights we collapsed into bed at three in the morning, still covered in brick dust and with dirt in our nails.We were exhausted. There were workmen everywhere - plasterers, carpenters, plumbers; blokes skimming floors, boys sawing and hammering, men reeling electrical cable from one room to another. Then there was the outside, which Martin insisted we tackle ourselves. The orchard, the vegetable plot, the garden. We got chickens, a few sheep, a dog.By autumn 2005, it was done. By Christmas, it was heaven.
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