Stone Cottage
Gayle Scott had always dreamed of living in an old cottage and was determined to do her best to restore this pretty village home
THE STORY
OWNERS Gayle Scott, a fleet administrator for a construction company and her husband Paul, an electrician, live here with Gayle’s two sons, Jake, 18, and Luke, 22, and the family Jack Russell, Ted
PROPERTY Built in 1675, the unlisted house in a Northamptonshire village was once two workmans’ cottages, which were knocked into one 70 years ago. It features a boot room, living room, snug, kitchen, dining room, utility and cloakroom, as well as three bedrooms and a family bathroom
WHAT THEY DID The couple have renovated almost every room of the house, restoring original features. They replaced concrete pointing with lime plaster, fitted timber-framed replacements for the rotten windows and installed a new more in-keeping staircase. They then redecorated throughout in a neutral, country scheme
rom the moment Gayle Scott walked through what she calls ‘the Hobbit door’ in the 17th-century Northamptonshire cottage that she and husband Paul came to view two years ago, she was sold. ‘The door has been here since the house was built and seemed to sum up everything I wanted in an old property, including character, history and permanence,’ she explains. ‘We’d spent years living in a 1980s house in a busy new town, and I’d always dreamed of living in a place like this, but thought we’d have to wait until we both retired to make the move.’
Fate, however, works in strange ways, and when the cottage came up for sale – right next door to Paul’s parents in the village where he’d grown up – they decided to go and view it, mainly out of curiosity. ‘Paul is much more practical than me,’ says Gayle, ‘and was thinking about whether it ticked all the boxes and so on, but – thank goodness – as he began to walk around, he said: “Actually, I can really see us living here...” I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy!’
It still took a huge leap of imagination to appreciate what the property – once two sep
