A family-of-four who abandoned their terraced London home to relocate to an abandoned mansion in the countryside are set to spend 'hundreds of thousands' of pounds restoring the 'mouldy' property to its former glory.
Ben Charles Edwards, 42, and his husband Sam, 34, made the decision to leave the city so that their two sons, aged eight and five, could enjoy more space for play and adventure. While driving just outside Canterbury, Ben, a film producer, and Sam, a model, discovered Lawn House, an enormous 11,000-square-foot Georgian property that had been converted into a care home and left to decay since 2017.
The couple instantly fell in love with the mansion and purchased it for £1 million, moving in during February 2026. However, the main house is currently uninhabitable, plagued by leaks, extensive mould, and a partially missing roof. The family is presently residing in a wing at the back of the house, which was built by the care home and is far more modern than the rest of the property.
Ben and Sam intend to spend at least a decade gradually restoring the home to its original state, removing the 24 care home bedrooms and returning each room to its intended function. The couple, who still commute to London a few times weekly for work, have adapted well to countryside life and report that their children are delighted with the extra space to explore.
Ben, originally from east London, remarked: 'London's an amazing city, I owe so much to London, it's always going to be my home. But we wanted to move to the countryside so that the boys would have more outside space. We wanted them to feel alive. They've never had more cuts and bruises from playing outside than they have in the last couple of months. They're climbing trees and doing things that London couldn't offer a young family.'
He added: 'Lawn House was a dilapidated mess when we found it, but it's one of the most stunning examples of Georgian architecture I've ever seen. It's only 50 minutes on the train to London, which is great when we need to commute into the city for work. You get a different form of community in the countryside; everyone is so friendly and supportive. Within the first few hours after we moved, five or six people came and introduced themselves.'
Ben and Sam have spent the last decade moving into various properties in East London, renovating them, and then moving on to their next project. Ben confessed: 'We bought each one with the intention of staying, but I love a project.' After having children, the couple discussed moving to the countryside to provide their boys with more outdoor space. In August 2025, while driving near Canterbury, they spotted the mansion atop a hill. Climbing up, they peered through a window and saw a ballroom with a grand white marble fireplace featuring a carved Greek goddess.
'I immediately fell in love with it, and I said to Sam, 'We need to move here',' Ben recounted. By February 2026, the family had left their four-bedroom terrace house for Lawn House, which is ten times the size of their London home. The property sits on one acre of land, which Ben and Sam plan to transform into a vegetable garden and chicken coop.
'There's a gorgeous walled garden, and so much space for the boys to play and run around and have adventures,' Ben said. The couple is now undertaking the monumental task of slowly restoring the property, a process that could take decades. 'It's all being hand done and repaired, we're not looking to change anything, we're just looking to slowly repair it and allow it to operate as the Georgian house it was,' Ben explained.
So far, they have removed 20 tonnes of rubbish, including old wheelchairs and hospital beds, and stripped everything back to the original material to let it breathe. 'There were floorboards on top of floorboards, the care home kept adding bits instead of restoring anything,' Ben noted. 'We found a new staircase the other day that we didn't know we had, it was hidden by plywood.'
During the process, the couple discovered an auction paper from 1901 showing the original layout of the house, which they are using to restore each room to its original purpose. Ben described it as 'like a treasure map,' allowing them to identify where the library, parlour, and drawing room were. As the family plans to restore the house slowly over a long period, they have no exact estimate of the renovation cost but anticipate it will be hundreds of thousands of pounds over their lifetimes.
