It's a Rightmove Roundup of houses so special they have mini-houses of their own

London! The Hebrides! Devon! Yorkshire! No trouble at all!

I’m writing this in a cafe in Belsize Park while eavesdropping on a woman whose husband is having an affair with a mum from their kids’ school and now he’s moved into the holiday annexe of their house in Norfolk. He doesn’t shop so he saunters into his wife’s kitchen to see what she’s cooked for the kids then steals it.

Actually I’m not eavesdropping - people who live between Belsize Park and Norfolk seem to raise their voices loudly enough to carry between the two properties - but I’m impressed by the man’s gall. Because whenever I see a property that comes with some kind of annexe, cottage or granny flat, I always think how unobtrusive I’d be once I’d moved in.

I see a listing for a manor house with a lickle cottage and somehow imagine, as if this makes my fantasies entirely reasonable, someone else buying the big house and me just perching in the mini house down the lawn.

“I’ll be no trouble!” I imagine myself saying, as if, given the right opportunity, I’d choose to become a thimble, rather than a flesh-laden member of society.

“I’ll be no trouble!” I say, having spent my life thus far being a fair amount of trouble, as well as having hankered for large homes, and also being a middle-aged woman with family, pets, occasional Asos habit, requirement to work from home, hold sleepovers for daughter’s gangling adolescent friends, store every scribble said daughter has ever drawn because daughter clearly an artistic genius and the National Gallery will eventually need juvenilia for their retrospective, that kind of thing.

I’LL BE NO TROUBLE, I say, as you catch sight of me peering through your windows at night, my head bobbing up from the lawn like a drunk rabbit.

I’LL BE NO TROUBLE, I say, as I steamroller my way into your mansion and your marriage.

I’LL BE NO TROUBLE, I say, as the restraining order kicks in and the police van arrives to take me away.

Anyway, here’s a beautiful and yet absurd house in Hampstead, that my grandparents once lived next door to (I could weep, I didn’t know them, read all about that here), that is now on the market for an adorable twenty million pounds.

And it comes with a cottage. For me. Or for your deadbeat husband. YOU DECIDE:

ONE: Romney’s House, Hampstead, 6 beds, 7 parking spaces, £20m

On the outside, it’s a listed 1790s building with a blue plaque commemorating the artist George Romney, who was born and died in Cumbria but built this house after finding fame in London as a society portraitist.

On the inside, it’s all recent architectural makeover that just about squeaks in on the tasteful side of gakky, since that they’ve gone for an ‘exit through the giftshop in a Danish art gallery holding an exhibition about the overlap between brutalism and lesbianism’ vibe, rather than ‘house party for cokeheads in an advertising agency run by someone who pretends to know Banksy.’ But it’s… close.

Is this next photo the cottage? With its meat stripped out? Have they put the cottage on Ozempic?

I mean, it’s fine. Totes fine. We all want to lose weight. Put me in there I’ll never eat or breathe I’LL BE NO TROUBLE AT ALL.

TWO: 3 bed cottage + “ancillary accommodation,” Somerset, £625k

In a more reasonable price bracket, in a village near Castle Cary and Bruton, is this very lovely house called Corner Cottage:

And Corner Cottage comes with a cottage of its own, like a dog who keeps a pet dog.

Let’s take a look at the cottage’s cottage.

Oh my God.

Yes.

It’s like a little human carport, a place to park a person, as big as a Tory MP’s hopes of winning the next election. That’s where I’d live and I would promise to be absolutely no - well you get the idea.

Look at the little cottage cottage!

No trouble at all!

THREE: The Mount + art studio, 7 beds, Totnes, Devon, £1.5m

Ok well, not to start wanging on about my other grandparents (who I did know and love), but anyway, this is near where they lived, though I’ve never seen this house before and am rather startled by it.

I mean look at this

And this!

And those rooms aren’t even in the art studio, yes there’s a separate studio, which is down the garden:

and has more art inside:

And though it’s not really got any other rooms, I really do think that I could live peacefully in it and be, yes, absolutely none at all.

Now Substack is telling me I’ve overloaded this email with images and it’s about to topple over, so you’ll have to look here for the beautiful period house opposite York racecourse which, for £1.25m, gives you 8 bedrooms spread across The Lodge and The Coach House. (It doesn’t seem to have pics of the coach house? I’d be willing to live in the greenhouse below?)

Oh but I have to show you the photos of a turret of a house in Scotland, not far from the Port Bannatyne marina on the Isle of Bute, Western Isles, accessible by 35 minute ferry to the mainland (or only a 5 minute ferry from the less convenient side).

FIVE: 4 bed, offers over £475k, Wester Kames, Outer Hebrides

It doesn’t need an annexe because it IS one all of its own, trying to stand still but hopping on one leg like a choir boy who really needs the loo:

And I can only thank whoever it was who sent me this Scottish turret house - I can’t remember, sorry! - but I will leave you with this zoomed out view of its location beside the sea. Until next time folks, and if anyone does happen to have a spare studio for me…. no, I mean it. Absolutely none. You’d barely know I was even there.