The Tudor House Exeter

No blip yesterday due to spending most of the day in a cheerless hospital waiting room.

No much opportunity today either, with wall to wall meetings. Sigh.

In the middle distance you can see a quaint Tudor House, marooned in a sea of nondescript buildings.

Built around 1660 for a wealthy merchant who wanted to live near the River Exe quayside, the house was owned by well-to-do families over the next 300 years until it fell into disrepair. Then in the mid-Sixties, when neighbouring buildings were falling foul of the bulldozers, a local builder named Bill Lovell bought it for £700 and spent £60,000 on restoring it, saving it from demolition. The task almost bankrupted him and he offered the house to Exeter City Council in 1975, which refused it, then sold it on the open market for £60,000.

Now it's a private house. Last year you could buy it for near a million.