Ruin’s remarkable restoration
Swapping the dusty streets of London for the fresh air of the Highlands sounds wonderful – but would you still move knowing your dream home was a tumbledown wreck with no services? Susan Welsh meets the couple whose hard work and sheer determination has helped create the only listed thatched croft in the northern Highlands
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A LOT of holidaymakers visiting the Highlands go home wishing they could stay a little longer. Some even leave secretly harbouring a dream about owning a cottage there one day.
It’s a situation Kate Morrison and Ade Kendel found themselves in a few years ago.
Ade, from London, and Yorkshire-born Kate were holidaying in Skye when they noticed a number of pretty white-washed cottages.
“We spent half the holiday speaking about how wonderful it would be if one day, we found ourselves being the owners of a Highland cottage in a lovely remote place where we could come and spend our holidays,” said Kate.
Back home in Maidstone, Kent, it became the sole topic of conversation.
“We decided to take the plunge and find a cottage to do up so we remortgaged our house and in October of 2002, Ade started house hunting.
“Originally we were looking for a cottage on the west coast but at that time property prices were a bit silly and we were literally priced out of the market.
“Then Ade spotted two cottages for sale in Gartymore just outside Helmsdale. I’d never been further north than Dornoch before, so during the February half-term holidays, I came up to have a look.”
If she had been expecting a vision of a picture-postcard home, she was in for a shock.
“Both were traditional croft houses. One had walls and a roof, a septic tank and access to water but no electricity while the other was a B-listed Historic Scotland croft which had a caved in roof, with doors and windows falling off, although some of the furniture was still inside.
“It had no water, electricity or any services, but we could see it had potential.”
The couple bought both crofts and entered into extensive discussions in order to obtain the necessary permissions and warrants to bring them back to life.
Initially they concentrated on upgrading the main croft and spent their holidays doing it up. But each time they came to the Highlands they found it harder and harder to return to their lives in the south of England.
Fate took a hand when Ade, a joiner, was made redundant. He decided to concentrate on working full-time on the croft conversion. A few months later, Kate gave up her job as a teacher and she and son Connor joined him.
“It was a big step and pretty tough at first as we literally set up camp inside the house.
“For the first while we pitched a tent within the croft and I had to get by with a two-ring camping stove, a Calor Gas fridge and a temporary kitchen sink.
“We had a generator which meant we had lights and could run a TV for a couple of hours.
“Ade converted Connor’s bedroom first so his room was fine but the rest of the house was like a campsite!”
Nine months later, they had electricity.
“It was funny, but we spent the first few days running about switching on lights and saying, ‘look lights’,” said Kate laughing at the memory.
Money from the sale of their house helped finance the restoration, and in-between, Ade was working as a self-employed joiner.
“I work as a childminder and we worked out that in order to have funds to complete the work on the house we were living in, we needed to do something with the other croft,” explained Kate.
“The croft features in the Timespan Museum in Helmsdale and we know it was built around the early 1900s, but historic maps show a building here from around 1772.
“We decided to restore it to a traditional thatch roof cottage, but inside would be a modern, cosy house which we would let out.”
Anyone who has watched TV shows such as Grand Designs will know the pitfalls of taking on such a huge project.
Starting from scratch is one thing but converting a ruin into a habitable home with a strict budget of just £60,000, sounds nigh-on impossible.
“It took us 10 months working literally seven days a week, but we managed to bring the whole thing in close to the budget,” said Kate.
Ade did the physical work while Kate became project manager, creating the drawings and looking after the tonnes of paperwork it generated.
The completed croft has plenty of ‘wow’ factor and as Kate revealed, friends and neighbours cannot believe that in less than a year a tumbledown croft has been transformed into a stunning family home.
The accommodation now has a porch, a large open plan living room and kitchen with large coombed ceilings and a pretty wood-burning stove, a modern, practical kitchen, a stylish bathroom and two good-sized bedrooms.
There’s electricity, running water, central heating and where appropriate, double glazing – all items Kate and Ade considered luxurious a few months ago.
The white-washed cottage is topped with a beautiful thatched roof which Ade created, so they now own the only listed thatched croft in Sutherland.
“A chap called Leo Wood, a retired thatcher, spent four days with us showing us how to create a thatched roof,” said Kate.
“It’s interesting to learn but quite tough work. Ade likes his power tools and I think he found the whole thing very frustrating and tiring because it is a slow job to complete and very tough on the hands.
“It gets quite windy here so it’s important to weigh down the thatch to stop it blowing away.
“When we were uncovering the old thatch we discovered slabs, stones, net and even bits of old railway sleepers had been used to hold it down previously.”
Now the thatch is kept in place by local stones suspended from the roof which are practical but look pretty, and make a nice change to the usual wind chimes hung outside houses.
The cottage will welcome its first lodgers this month, and the rent will be used to help complete the transformation of Kate and Ade’s cottage which they share with children Connor and Catriona. Baby number three is expected to make an appearance in the autumn.
Converting two crofts has been a huge project and involved a massive change of lifestyle, so the killer question is: Would they do it all again?
After hesitating, albeit briefly, Kate said: “Possibly, which means that’s not a definite no.
“It was definitely a learning curve for both of us and I’m glad we did it when we did.
“The way the financial market is now I think if we were starting out today, we would struggle to find a bank willing to give a mortgage to two self-employed people for a regular house, let alone a ruined cottage in the northern Highlands.”
If you would like to know more about the croft in Helmsdale, call 01431 821160 or log on to thethatchedcroft.co.uk/
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