Skip to main content

Cook's Delight!

This week I went to give some marketing and pricing advice on a two bedroom modern ‘cottage’ in Sutton which we had sold from new to the now owners when they were first time buyers. Nothing unusual in that you might say but, apart from the very well presented interior and the larger than average rear garden this excellent starter home concealed a secret!
Our clients are accountants and are emigrating to Australia but unfortunately have to leave behind their pride and joy in the rear garden. Following a course at Hugh Fearley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage they returned to Sutton to build their clay oven.
( http://www.rivercottage.net/ and http://www.rivercottage.net/Events37~16/BuildandBake.aspx )
They have enjoyed superb stone baked pizza from their wood-fired oven which has to be protected from the rain or it will dissolve back to it’s constituent parts! Equally it can be used for roasting meat and grilling fish. The Inghams intend to build another when they are settled in Australia and introduce clay ovens to the home of the ‘barbie’.




A talented writer, broadcaster and campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known for his uncompromising commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food. His books, journalism and series for Channel 4 have earned him a huge popular following.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

House builders discuss 95% mortgages with lenders

So the house builders and the lenders have had a meeting to discuss how they can create 95% mortgages. Basically a good thing, as you would imagine most estate agents would say. But what proportion of the housing Market is represented by new homes sales to first time buyers? Also any first time buyer who purchases a new home is then a cost to the second hand Market of who knows how many sales! If I think back 30 years my wife and I as first time buyers were providing a deposit of 10%. To do this we sold her car, saved up by not going out as much and generally committed ourselves to the task of buying our first home together. Ah, you might say, but house prices were so much cheaper then. True but my salary was just under £2,000 per annum with the prospect of perhaps another £1,000 in commission from selling at lease 6 houses per month personally. The first 4 didn't count towards commission but were to cover my costs to my employer! I personally don't think 95% mortgages are ...

Tory Minister Vows to End Era of House Price Booms

Tory Minister Vows to End Era of House Price Booms The latest nonsense to issue from the mouth of a Con-Dem minister has left me agitated, not to say irritated! The Daily Mail of 13th October reported Grant Shapps’, the Housing Minister, speech to the Housing Market Intelligence conference. Read in full here http://bit.ly/dpGL4K if you are suffering from low blood pressure. He stated: “...middle class families ... should not rely on their homes to fund retirement”. We have had a Labour Government mount a several billion pound raid on pension funds, a stock market lose our pension funds a fortune and now we have a Tory telling us that property as a pension is a mortal sin! I suppose if you are an MP or a senior civil servant then you won’t need to worry about the investment in your property as you have a gold plated, brass constructed pension that the middle-classes have, and are still being asked, to fund from their heavily taxed income, whilst paying into their poorly performin...