by Amanda Owen
Inevitably the day came when Tot became too old and ill to come to his sheep. Friends took over his daily jobs and for a little while Tot was kept updated on the goings on whilst in a hospital bed. Sadly, weeks later he died. His sheep were sold and the land too; all that remained was to find a new owner for Smithy Holme.
It was a place that we knew very well, we’d often walked there on the footpath from Ravenseat which was, until the middle of the last century, the main route both to and from our house. As footpaths often do, it followed the gentle contours of the hillside, meandering through the pastures and then skirting the edge of Cotterby Scar before joining the road to the nearest village, Keld, an hour’s walk away. The children loved to poke around in Smithy Holme’s outbuildings as Tot had, over the years, accumulated what can only be politely described as a bit of junk. This included a canoe, an old generator and the skeletal remains of what Reuben reliably informed me was a Land Rover series I.
These carefree walks became more purposeful when the ‘for sale’ sign went up. We now went walking with a view to buying. I liked the haphazardness of the outbuildings, the stunted tree with tangled roots that grew through the foundations of the low garden wall which divided the frontage and what I would call the home field. The house itself was square and angular, solid and well built, and where before we’d looked wistfully upon it as being the home of an old friend, we now had to open our eyes to the realities of the place as a potential renovation project.
There was no denying that to take on a house in this state would be a big undertaking and, after a great deal of soul-searching and a few reality checks, we were confronted with the harsh truth that we didn’t have the skills necessary to be able to do the work and definitely not the time required to get the project off the ground. Heavy-heartedly we accepted that once again this was an opportunity that must pass us by.
I couldn’t believe that in such a relatively short space of time two properties in the upper dale had come onto the market and each time it hadn’t worked out for us.
‘Bide yer time,’ Clive would say. ‘Summat’ll ’appen.’ And once again he was absolutely right.
It was September 2013, a beautiful summer holiday had been enjoyed by the children and now our focus was on making ready for Muker Show. Every year we would prepare our show sheep, bake cakes and buns, and enjoy a day away from the farm meeting up with friends whilst the children overdosed on sweets and ice cream and the bouncy castle. It was often the case that you’d catch up with friends that you hadn’t seen for a whole year since the last show, and this was exactly how we finally came to find our perfect house.
Susan and Graham had lived at The Firs for the thirty years that Clive had farmed at Ravenseat and we knew them well. It would be fair to say that we were neighbours, as only a couple of miles separates our dwellings as the crow flies, but where Ravenseat had a council-maintained road leading right down to the packhorse bridge, The Firs did not. Susan, like myself, had a love of horses, particularly native ponies. When we bumped into each other whilst out and about we’d talk about our equine adventures and often mishaps. When I had first moved in with Clive, he had accepted that my horse was moving in too and considered it a small price to pay for a jodhpur-clad girlfriend. Of course, as time went on, I accumulated more horses and inevitably the jodhpurs didn’t fit quite as well as they once did but Clive, although not a horse lover himself, didn’t complain . . . well not too much and not enough to make any difference.
As soon as Raven was big enough, I bought her an old gelding called Boxer at a riding-school sale. He was a pony of indiscriminate breeding, thickset, chunky and already long in the tooth when he came home with me to Ravenseat. He came equipped with an antiquated English leather saddle and a bridle with a severe, double-pelham bit as poor Boxer’s mouth had been deadened after years of being pulled by the hands of novice riders. His days of hard, monotonous work were now behind him, he had the chance to kick up his heels and enjoy a leisurely semi-retirement. I’d take him out on a little hack occasionally but for the most part he was tasked with the very important job of carrying Raven in a basket saddle whilst I either led him from another horse or on foot. He put on weight, his spiky rubbed mane and tail became lustrous again, and during the summer months his coat developed a sheen. His crumbling hooves no longer needed to be shod, I dressed them myself with a rasp and tripod, another purchase at the riding-school sale. I was proud to win first prize with him in the veteran class at Trainriggs Show at Kirkby Stephen. One of the other exhibitors at the show remarked that she’d learned to ride on Boxer almost twenty-five years ago and that he must now be well into his thirties.
Susan told me that when Raven required a mount of her own to ride independently, she had just the perfect pony. Little Joe was a Shetland that she had bought for her granddaughter who had now outgrown him. The day that Little Joe was scheduled to come to Ravenseat was the first and only time that I had actually been to The Firs itself and, as it happened, I arrived home empty handed, for, after jolting my way down to the house in the Land Rover, Little Joe had stubbornly refused to go into the trailer, leaving Susan with the task of walking him to our house. The road down to The Firs was little more than a narrow rutted track, steep in places, which cut through two gated fields and disappeared from sight in a final tight bend before sweeping around and stopping abruptly outside the house. I had no real lasting memory of the place and Clive had never actually been there.
Joe came to us on loan over a decade ago and has since introduced Raven and seven of her siblings to the delights of being in the saddle. There is not a bad bone in his body, he doesn’t bite or kick, is never sick or sorry, but has a tendency to be stubborn and an ability to escape from anywhere at any given time.
Clive hates him. Or rather he says he hates him, calls him a demon and blames him for every gap that appears in the drystone walls.
‘Bugger’s bin scrattin’ his arse on t’wall.’
It is true that Little Joe has supersonic hearing and can detect the sound of a feed bag rustling at a thousand paces. There is no denying that after homing in on wherever Clive was feeding his flock Joe could desecrate the whole pastoral scene by galloping around, sending sheep flying this way and that. He’d then eat their cake, totally ignoring Clive’s loud protestations. Many times, Clive would return to the yard, red in the face, and announce that Little Joe’s days were numbered and if he got colic from eating all the sheep food then he absolutely deserved it and there’d be no vet coming to save him.
Little Joe, of course, never ailed a thing, but now age has crept up on him, his face has greyed, his hip bones jut out and his back has dropped. He gets extra rations, a cosy stable every night and recently I have even seen Clive throw an extra armful of meadow hay over his stable door before bedtime.
Clive and I were enjoying the show and the September sunshine, listening to the silver band playing in the bandstand. Wintertime was far from our thoughts, but not Susan and Graham’s, it seemed, as they had a favour to ask.
‘We were wondering if you’d mind keeping an eye on our place during the winter,’ they said.
‘’Course not,’ I said. ‘Are you off to sunnier climes? A holiday somewhere?’
‘Well, sort of,’ said Susan. ‘We’re going to Kirkby Stephen for the winter, so not a holiday as such, we’ve bought a house there.’
They had reluctantly decided that it was time to leave their beloved house and move to civilization, nearer to amenities and services and where everyday life was less of a challenge. They’d even found some land nearby for their horses.
‘We’ll come back and spend one last summer there and then put the house on the market.’
Year on year of hard winters, trudging through the snow up and down the track, cut off from the world and struggling to keep warm, had taken its toll. Still, it was going to be a wrench for them, leaving their rural idyll behind, I could see that.
‘It’d be really good to know that nothing has f
rozen up, that the water’s still running. We’ll be back in the spring when the weather has picked up.’
When we called on them for instructions and the keys, Clive and I were shown around the house, and we noted where the stop tap, fuse box and all the storage heaters were. After writing down their new contact number, we left, promising to return regularly to check on things.
As it happened, that winter was not a hard one; it did snow, and it did freeze but not for any great length of time. We dutifully called in from time to time, switching on heaters when required whilst hopefully not accruing the absent owners a sizeable electricity bill. Not long after they were back in residence we met on the road whilst out walking with the children.
‘The house is up for sale,’ said Susan. ‘Just on the estate agent’s website though, I couldn’t bear to put a sign up at the top of the track by the road.’
It made sense, in a way. They’d spent all those years living privately and quietly and I suppose the thought of nosy people invading their oasis was unbearable. Then she said it.
‘I don’t suppose that you’d be interested in buying it?’
Obviously, I had thought about it, not as a realistic idea but more of a pipe dream. I needed a wreck and one that was priced accordingly, a renovation project that I could work on as and when I could afford it. The Firs was too good for me.
‘I’d love to, Susan,’ I said, ‘but it’s just not the right time for me, I don’t have a healthy enough bank balance to even consider it.’
‘That’s a real shame,’ she said, ‘because I would have liked you and your family to have had it.’
I told her that unfortunately I couldn’t and that I was sure that she would find a buyer – it was, after all, a perfect rural retreat. There was also another reason why house-hunting was off the agenda, one that I’d kept quiet about. I was now pregnant with my eighth child.
Once I was back at home, I went online to have a look at the house particulars: ‘A rare opportunity to buy a traditional farmhouse and land in Upper Swaledale.’ I scrolled through the text. ‘With period features dating back to the 1640s,’ it trumpeted. There were photos of the interior, but far more of its big selling point: its views and location. Only a stone’s throw from the farmhouse flows the River Swale. Online there maybe contradictory articles stating that the Swale begins at the confluence of Whitundale Beck (that flows through Ravenseat) and Sledale Beck just below Hoggarths Bridge, and that what flows past The Firs is merely a tributary. But I’m more inclined to believe my old friends like Jennie, who was born at Ravenseat and has lived in Swaledale all her life – she says this stretch of water is already the youthful beginnings of the mighty River Swale, that the Swale comes into being a little further upstream where Birkdale Beck and Sledale Beck meet. The situation of The Firs is magnificent, with shelter from the weather and prying eyes, and it’s nestled in tightly between the rising bronzed moors and a copse of ash trees. Immediately surrounded by its own fields and not bothered by any near neighbours, it looked like paradise. Unfortunately, its price reflected this desirability. Over half a million quid! The Yorkshire Dales was a popular place for second homes and, with only a limited number of houses and a seemingly infinite number of potential buyers with a lot of money, it seemed that once again my dream would be thwarted. It was an outrageous price for a farmhouse that would once have been classed as a lowly dwelling, a place where peasant farmers would eke out a living from the poorest of land. I vowed not to look again.
Time flew by, and we, too, found ourselves putting a property on the market. Robert, Clive’s eldest son from his first marriage, moved out of our ground-floor flat at Kirkby Stephen where he’d lived for over a decade. We had used the proceeds from the foot-and-mouth compensation in 2001 to buy the flat, and Robert had lived there whilst working for us at Sandwath, the other farmland and buildings that we rented for a while at Kirkby Stephen. Now that Robert had taken over Sandwath himself, and got a girlfriend, the time was ripe for him to move into a bigger place, and we were left with a small flat to sell. We thought this would give us some savings to put towards a housing project of our own, should another opportunity arise, but not being spacious nor in the best of locations the flat languished on the market. Every so often the estate agent would ring and inform us of a viewing, but nothing ever materialized.
‘If you wait long enough the right buyer will come along,’ said the agent. ‘You have got to be patient with these things.’
It seemed that Susan was having no luck with selling her house either and she too had been issued with the same advice. There had been a few viewings of The Firs, we knew.
‘A handful of dreamers,’ she said when I met her while she was out walking her dog one afternoon. ‘Folks who wouldn’t last two minutes when the realities of life in the rural backwaters really sank in.’
‘And the others?’
‘The worst sort,’ she said, looking defiant. ‘Them that want to modernize it, iron out the lumps and bumps and the charm of the place. They tell us how they’re going to make our home habitable! Can you imagine? Can’t you buy it, Amanda? You like things as they are supposed to be.’
I smiled; I did, as she said, like things as they were supposed to be, and places that had retained their true heritage were thin on the ground. I repeated that, sadly, I was in no way able to buy it.
‘Skinted, not minted!’ I said and reiterated that it would be my dream to be able to own The Firs but that it was out of my league. Later, I told Clive that I’d been talking to Susan.
‘’Ave they getten that ’ouse sold yet?’ he said. ‘Or are we lookin’ after it for another winter?’
I told him that they, too, were having difficulty finding a buyer, although for different reasons than ourselves.
‘I don’t think Susan likes what the potential buyers want to do with the house, and she’s trying to put them off,’ I said. ‘I think Graham is humouring her, he knows how much the place means to her.’
‘Mmmmm,’ Clive said, not really listening.
‘She still wants us to buy it,’ I said.
‘I wonder if they wanna part-exchange it for a flat at Kirkby Stephen?’ he said jokingly.
‘I doubt it,’ I said, ‘they’ve already bought a house there and what would they want with a pokey little flat anyway?’
I thought that it was a ridiculously stupid idea; there was no way that I was going to put that suggestion to Susan, ever.
‘We should ga an’ see ’em, tha knows,’ Clive said. ‘Sort this lot out once an’ for all. It’s no good Susan putting folks off thinking that if she waits lang enough we’re going to buy it.’
He was right, it needed sorting out once and for all.
We arranged to go over at the weekend when Raven was at home to keep an eye on the littler ones. Susan and Graham welcomed us with tea and biscuits, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether they thought that we had good news for them. I’d decided that Clive should do the talking but just to make sure there were no crossed wires, I thought I’d be clear from the outset.
‘We ’aven’t won the lottery,’ I said.
‘An’ we ’aven’t sold the flat,’ said Clive, sipping his tea.
‘I don’t suppose you’d consider selling the flat to us, like a part-exchange?’ Graham asked.
I nearly choked on my tea; I could not believe my ears, my despondency evaporated. I had a complete turnaround from despair to elation.
‘I’d like to do it up as a holiday let,’ he continued, ‘a project, something for me to do.’
‘Let’s see if we can make this happen,’ Clive said, looking rather pleased with himself. He stood up and shook Graham’s hand.
Next came reams of paperwork, to and from solicitors and estate agents, surveyors and the bank. Nothing is ever simple, even when all parties are in agreement.
Now I had only one more person to convince that buying The Firs was a good idea: my bank manager, Lionel. It was make-or-break time – his inpu
t (lending us most of the money) was critical, so I needed to persuade him that it was a serious business proposition and that I would be able to recoup the money by letting The Firs for holidays. Lionel offered to come out to meet us at Ravenseat and see firsthand what we did and what we planned to do, to look at our business plan and projections and go through formalities. Needless to say, I was terrified and had no idea what I should do to impress him so opted for plying him with tea, freshly baked scones and cake, then chaperoned him down to the shepherd’s hut so he could see my flourishing bed-and-breakfast project. There was no let-up in visitors and it helped our cause greatly that Clive was kept busy temporarily running the business of serving afternoon teas whilst I was being grilled. The doorbell kept ringing as customers put in their orders and Clive scurried back and forth with loaded tea trays.
Next, I took Lionel to The Firs and set about sharing my vision with him as he followed me from room to room. What he probably didn’t realize was that I was convincing myself as much as I was trying to convince him and scaring myself silly at just how much work needed doing in not so much time. We needed to rent out The Firs as a holiday let as soon as possible to pay back what we owed, but in order to do this we had to renovate it sympathetically.
For all my enthusiasm it was still a big leap into the unknown, a project of immense magnitude – and not only that, I was hiding the fact that I was pregnant with Clemmie, our eighth baby, for fear of sounding completely feckless.
‘Have you any plans for expanding your family?’ Lionel asked me, as tactfully as he could.
‘No, no plans to,’ I said, crossing my fingers behind my back and breathing in. After a couple of torturous hours, Lionel finally gave me his verdict. ‘I am going to lend you the money and I have no doubt that you will succeed with this project,’ he said as he shook my hand. I welled up – to this day I don’t think that he knew what his belief meant to me, for without his go-ahead the whole project was a non-starter.
