Cottage inflation

Walk round your local village and you will see a small phenomenon. 

Folks buy a block of two or three old houses, they knock through the walls and make one large house.They build extra rooms on the back, add a swimming pool and solar heating, park a pair of expensive 4x4s at the front. This six bedroom pied a terre in attractive rural surroundings is then renamed The Old Gamekeepers Cottage.

Cottage? This is inverted snobbery. A romantic notion. Cottage as in Rather Smart Rural Retreat actually.

We lived in this cottage when I was young in the 1960s. It was down on the farm right next to the cow yard and only ten years earlier it had outside toilets. That was a proper cottage - with rats....



No. I think we should extend this inverted snobbery. Rural bolt holes for the rich should now be named The Old Cowman's Hovel. Now that sounds truly romantic.

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