ALL IN GOOD TIME

With a five-year hiatus between moving in and starting work on the renovation, Candice and Angus Hart can finally relax in their charming gatehouse home

- ALICE HUMPHRYS

Anyone trying to buy a house when the market is hot will understand the pain of seeing properties snapped up in minutes. In 2013, when Candice and Angus Hart decided to leave London for the Home Counties, no amount of viewings, offers or flexibility around location was getting them anywhere near a new home.

'I don't think anything was on the market for more than five minutes so once we settled on Haslemere in Surrey, we decided to rent,' explains Angus. It was while celebrating their daughter's third birthday that a call came from a local estate agent to say an old gatehouse was coming on to the market but that they needed to get in early. Angus saw it on the Saturday morning and phoned me straight away saying, "You'd better come and look; this is the one." I was there in 20 minutes and he was right - there was never going to be another house for us,' agrees Candice.

Angus thinks an awkward configuration and a lot of stairs might have dampened the competition. It wasn't a house to retire to and, with bedrooms at opposite ends of the property, it wasn't really for families with small babies either,' he says. "There's not a straight wall in the property but it was absolutely bursting with character and the location is lovely. It had finally all come together for us.'