The reason we went on the excursions into Hobbit Land is because we’re looking for somewhere suitable to plant our roots. Somewhere we can live off-grid to a certain extent, with peace and tranquility rather than the rat-race of town living. We have our own little herd of ponies and I’d simply love to look out of the windows and watch them – of course, that’s just the example of how close they’d be, not an example of the type of contact I want with them).
We’re fortunate that we live on the edge of our town, but even this area is being overwhelmed by businesses and more building works. Amazon are building a supply warehouse less than a mile from us, so I can only imagine the traffic that’s going to create. Fields and woodlands are being levelled all around and we no longer live ‘out in the sticks’ as we did when we first moved here.
The excursion, though unsuccessful with regards to finding us a piece of land to buy for this purpose, was useful because we know how estate agents describe pieces of land now and we’re more likely to say, “Nah… I don’t think so” when we see that idyllic piece of land at a ‘too good to be true’ price tag in future.
The land at Coombe Woods
The only actual entrance to the land is almost 2 miles off any paved road and is therefore too difficult to access. 90% of the land is too steep to have any vehicle on it, and there’s no prospect of building anything on there – or getting the building materials to site. It’s riddled with mines and mine shafts – many undocumented (dating back to the Romans). Plus, a lot of the trees would need to be felled at our cost because of the Ash Dieback we found - unless, of course, they were poisoned by the mine leakage in which case we’d still need to fell the trees. The water we saw there is not drinkable because of the mining. So the delightful stream running along the boundary is actually poisonous and would need to be treated if we wanted to use it for anything – including watering plants and/or horses.
Small quarry wasn’t actually for sale, the scrubland was. Again, the land is riddled with undocumented mine shafts. The area that was for sale has been a dumping ground over a 30-year period, including a plastic factory’s waste which was dumped down two of the known mine shafts on the site. It has previously failed to achieve planning permission for a caravan park on the site and therefore, planning permission for anything else is unlikely. Not to mention the fact that the grassland is terribly sparse and even sheep would have difficulty taking sustenance from it. Then there’s a massive hole in the ground on the border of the property, rendering the land dangerous to wander around.
The disposal of the massive concrete structures would be cost-prohibitive too.
The last quarry we saw is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest because it’s a rare example of a method of quarrying done in historic times and one of very few examples left intact and therefore cannot be used. The 40-metre sheer faces would be prohibitive in many ways – access, building, habitation etc. and planning consent/permission is unlikely because they don’t like people building so close to sheer rock faces – bits of stone dropping onto the building is just one of the many hazards, I suppose.
The land itself is North-facing so gets no sun. There’s a ‘live’ quarry close to it and the blasting from that could still shake loose the workings. There’s a concrete factory in sight of the land and the smoke from that, given the right wind and weather conditions, could be uncomfortable to live with. We saw a house close by with a water container on scaffolding close to the roof line. It appeared to have been there a while and I therefore assume it’s a permanent ‘fix’ for low water pressure problems. If the existing properties have issues with water pressure, I can assume any new buildings would be similarly affected.
A Scheduled Monument on the other side of the track – a Roman mine works there would mean we’d be unlikely to get permission to change the path to the site. The path is little more than a swath of ground, worn into a road only by the off-roaders that use the site. They would also create a problem as they would be difficult and stubborn to prevent – someone would have to be on site at all times to ensure they didn’t return. The off-roaders also create another problem – if one were to be injured, they could possibly have a claim for damages (as idiotic as that sounds).
So, in conclusion, all the pieces of land and property we looked at are unsuitable for a variety of insurmountable reasons and we won’t be buying any of them.
The search for land on which to create our off-grid home continues.
Oh yeah... the reason for the title is this: The mine workings - raw entrances into the earth, dotted about the hillsides - made me think of The Hobbitses and the title lodged itself in my head before I'd even started writing about the visits.
