Credit crunch - country style

'The rolling hills, dense bluebell woods and charming dry-stone walls have proved no barrier against the dark tentacles of the world finance crisis reaching the Cotswolds. This week a local stock trader has been arrested on suspicion of arson as the home in Upton St Leonards he'd enjoyed for over a decade blazed less than 12 hours after contracts had been exchanged, giving it over to new owners.

'Richard Hardy had told neighbours that he feared losing his house and judging by the fact that he'd moved with his wife and teenage daughters to an area that most people would see as a big step down, perhaps his change in circumstances seemed a little too much to bear.

'It can't have seemed like it to Richard Hardy, but he was lucky to sell his house at all. The property market seems to be going just as pear-shaped here as in the rest of the country. Prices are dropping by tens of thousands towards the lower end of the market, and by fifty or a hundred grand higher up.

'I really hate to say it, but if you were to manage to offload your four-bed semi in Wandsworth, south London at the moment you could pick up a dream house at a bargain basement price. The dreamiest properties around here tend to be with Murrays or Hamptons.  Check them out and be amazed at how much more you get here for your money than in London.

'Of course, I feel horribly guilty for even having such thoughts, let alone passing them on. I was chatting with a friend recently who was living on a modern housing estate which, while surrounded by pretty spectacular countryside, would be considered by middle-class style-fascist London exiles like myself to be terribly non-U. ‘It's OK for all these incomers to talk about how naff the estate is,' says my friend. ‘But it's thanks to them that those of us who've been here all our lives can't afford to live in the villages any more.'

'Of course he's got a point. You can see it when you look at who the pupils are in some of the schools in the very prettiest villages. The schools are often managing to stay open because locals who were brought up in these villages - now populated by ex-Londoners, retired business people and weekenders - are prepared to drive their kids five miles from their cheaper houses in towns to have a rural education.

'And on the other hand he doesn't have a point because it was the locals in the first place, who - like everyone else - wanted the best price for their house and if that money was moving out of London's Fulham or Clapham it made no difference at all.

'But despite the fact that property prices are in freefall, and there are bargains to be had, don't underestimate just how low wages can be once you're in a rural area, especially if you're a mum looking for part-time work to fit around children. I have been repeatedly shocked at how bad the wages are around the Cotswolds. I was paying our cleaner in London £3 an hour more than many of the local part-time admin or secretarial jobs are offering. 

'The unemployment rate is pretty low in our area at 1.4% as opposed to a 5.7% national average, but it has risen by a fifth in the past year. There's still a long way to go before younger locals on average wages are going to even bother to waste time dreaming about their dream home. The local councils are doing their best to bump up the numbers of affordable homes and housing association places being built but it's still hard to recover from the great council house sell-off initiated back in the 80s.

'Of course, lots of creative types have found fabulous solutions to the current economic landscape by living in gypsy caravans, yurts, converted railway carriages and Dutch barges scattered around the fields and canals of the area. And there are still the most peculiar and cheap little properties coming on to the market as an old hippy passes on or a young hippy moves to a commune in Spain. My children are always shouting at me to move away from the estate agent's windows as I am transfixed by yet another ‘restoration' project (read: lost cause) of a tumbledown wooden shack unreachable by any roads where I dream of setting up my donkey sanctuary and spending my evenings drinking pear wine and watching the sunsets.'

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