Escape to the Country presenter Jules Hudson has spoken about the moment he regretted buying a Welsh cottage for £29,000 that had no roof, no floors and little more than four walls.
Long before he became a familiar face on the BBC property programme, Hudson was drawn to rural living. In the 1990s, while working in the Upper Teifi Valley, he spotted a three-bedroom cottage in the village of Llanddewi Brefi and decided to make it his first home.
At £29,000, the property appeared to offer the chance to own a piece of the Welsh countryside cheaply. However, the cottage was in such poor condition that the then-26-year-old had to undertake a huge restoration project almost immediately.
A 'knackered' cottage with no roof
Looking back on the property, Hudson described its condition in stark terms. “The cottage was absolutely knackered. At one point, the roof was off. There were no floors. There were just the four walls and the sky. I thought, 'What have I done?'” he recalled, to The Times.
He admitted that he couldn't afford to buy another property at the time, but there was also something about the challenge that appealed to him. “But I couldn't afford anywhere else,” he said. “I was also intrigued by the idea of taking something ruinous and fixing it. I've always loved fixing and renovating things.”
The transformation took around eight months, with Hudson working alongside a builder to bring the neglected cottage back to life. It was a project that would ultimately shape his relationship with country living and give him first-hand experience of the highs and lows of restoring an old property.
From ruin to family home
The presenter has previously admitted that he would not necessarily advise others to take on a home in such a state. When he bought the cottage, he did so without a survey, and he later had to find a scheme to underwrite the mortgage.
The finished result was a very different sight from the roofless shell he had originally bought. Hudson named the property Morfa Isa and gradually turned it into a character-filled Welsh home, complete with original features including exposed stone walls, ancient beams, and flagstone quarry tiles.
The property also had restored outbuildings, including a workshop, while the surrounding garden became another major part of the project. For Hudson, the garden was just as important as the building itself.
Sold for £275,000
After several years of living at Morfa Isa, Hudson eventually put the cottage on the market in 2012 for £275,000. By then, the property was a world away from the £29,000 fixer-upper he had first encountered.
He later moved to Herefordshire, where he now lives with his wife, Tania Fitzgerald, and their son, Jack. Hudson went on to take on another major renovation project after buying his current property for £610,000. He has revealed that a further £100,000 was spent on improvements.
The house itself had already been saved from demolition decades earlier, but Hudson described it as tired when he and his family bought it. He has since restored original features and transformed the former two-up, two-down cottage into a five-bedroom family home, while making the most of its two acres of land.
Escape to the Country is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
