A corrugated iron shed in Cornwall, famously home to author Catrina Davies for over a decade, is set to be auctioned later this month with a guide price of £80,000 to £100,000. The 184-square-foot structure, plus a 25-square-foot shower room, sits on a plot known as “The Shop” near Land’s End and has established residential use, mains water, and electricity.
Davies moved into the shed in 2013 after renting a tiny room in a Bristol house-share for £400 a month. The shed had previously been her father’s office, lying empty for more than 20 years after his business collapsed. In her memoir Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed, Davies wrote that living in the shed was her answer to an “impossible question” of balancing an unsound economic system.
Inside, the shed features a cosy open-plan layout with wooden floors, a camping stove, a wood burner, a sofa, a writing desk, and a double mattress on a mezzanine level accessed by a ladder. An adjoining room contains a shower and toilet. The property also includes off-road parking and a garden.
Davies, who became pregnant at 42, decided she needed more space and moved with her son and partner into “another, bigger shed”. She said: “I planned to live in that shed forever… but the universe had other plans.” The shed will be auctioned by Auction House South West on 25 March, with Katie Roberts noting it could serve as a coastal retreat or creative hideaway.
