A village home that is both grand and cosy (From York Press)

A village home that is both grand and cosy

11:43am Thursday 19th April 2012

“THIS,” says Rosemary Dalton, “is our snug, it’s a lovely, cosy room to come into and spend some quiet time.”

Quiet indeed. It’s so silent I think I can hear a clock ticking – only to discover it is actually my own watch...

Now that’s quiet!

Rosemary and husband Len live surrounded by this tranquility, their house is set on a corner plot opposite the village church and graveyard (no noisy neighbours there) and with views of the Howardian Hills stretching into the distance.

The view from the snug, where we have started the tour of the house, gives us another window onto the world, in this case a paddock where horses are grazing peacefully.

“We get to see the black sheep trotting out, too,”

Rosemary says. By now you will have worked out that this is not a town property.

The Daltons’ home is Church View, a house of contradictions and surprises, in the gentle village of Foston, one beyond Thornton-le-Clay and one before Barton-le- Willows.

And here comes the first contradiction.

“You couldn’t get more rural,” Rosemary says, “but we can get into Monk’s Cross in around 15 minutes and into York in under 20 minutes.”

So, country quiet and yet within easy range of the city centre – as is often the case with York’s surrounding villages.

The best-of-both-worlds scenario is particularly apt in Church View, as this is a home which provides contrasts of its own; cosy comfort mixed with the simply grand. Let us explain...

The snug is a lovely room, a cottage-style den with overhead beams and lowlevel wall-mounted shelves dressed with books and magazines. It is, as Rosemary says, the ideal place to come and sit and read or listen to music in peace and quiet.

And then, across the way, we slip into another world – here we find a show-stopper of a drawing room.

A grand (and that’s not overstating the case) space which is a big as it is beautiful.

It has high, beamed ceilings and characterful cornicing, deep windows to two sides and a striking logburning stove in a feature fireplace at its centre.

There’s a great sense of space and light and it’s almost stately home in style.

Which perhaps is surprising as this is a house created from former farm buildings less than 30 years ago.

Rosemary and Les have been here for the latter half of that time and have obviously loved making this house a home.

“It’s a good job,” Rosemary says, as we look around the drawing room, “that we do have big rooms – Les likes his big pictures and artwork.”

The artwork (and very well-chosen it is too) is much in evidence as we move from the gracious drawing room into an equally-dramatic dining/ family room. Again, this room feels very grand, repeating the high, beamed ceiling and deep windows of the drawing room.

“I think you could do whatever you wanted with this room,” Rosemary says. “You could put in a billiard table and have it as a games room!

It would make a very nice family room, somewhere for the family to gather.”

It’s also, I would suggest, a marvellous room for entertaining – you could hold a ball here and have room to breathe (well, a small ball, that is, but you get the picture).

We now move from these two grand rooms into the kitchen (with a useful shower room and cloakroom in between) and here the best of this house comes combined.

The kitchen is big – but it also manages to feel incredibly warm and welcoming, comfortable and cosy. It’s also toasty warm, thanks in no small part to a delightful Rayburn range cooker which belts out heat and hot water.

It’s also, Les says as he makes the coffee, because the south-facing room gets all-day sun. Whatever the reason, only the coldest of property-watchers could fail to have their heart warmed by what is a very attractive space.

There is much to swoon over including an extensive range of bespoke, hand-painted wall and base units and work surfaces, a smartly-tiled floor and an exposed brick surround over the Rayburn.

What’s more, light floods in from a pair of French doors which open onto the rear garden – and the workaday stuff is stowed away in an ample utility room.

“I like the kitchen very, very much,”

Rosemary says, when I ask what she likes most about her home. “I like the fact that you can look out of the window onto the garden, you feel the sunshine and you don’t feel overlooked.”

She also likes the views from the front, across the graveyard. “If we waited just a few more years they could just pop us across the road,” she laughs.

She is joking, she and Les are far from being codgers – yet they do feel the time has come to downsize, which is why the house has hit the market.

It will be an obvious wrench when they leave – both have enjoyed the space, the light and the style of their home.

Space and style that is carried from the ground floor up to the first floor where there are four bedrooms, all doubles (naturally) and with the master bedroom having an ensuite shower room.

The views from the windows upstairs are wonderful, flitting from the fields and paddocks to the side to the hills and woodlands to front and back and, of course, Church View’s own gardens.

These sit to two sides of the house, neither overly large but both pleasant, colourful and easy on the eye.

To the front of the house there is a patio area beyond which lies a lawn and a flutter of colour from cherry blossom trees, sitting behind privacy-providing hedges.

To the other side, backing onto the kitchen, is another lovely spot with seating areas, flower beds, gravelled areas and flower-strewn pergola- style rises.

The house also has two garages, front and back, with parking spaces in front of each.

And so, having taken an enjoyable tour, it’s time to leave... but not before sitting for a moment on the churchyard wall and enjoying that wonderful peace and quiet.

at a glance

Church View,Village Farm, Foston

Reception rooms: 3

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 3

Gardens: Pretty gardens to front and back. Two garages

Wow factor: A fantastic, sunny kitchen – and a wonderful, big and beautiful drawing room

Price: £395,000

Contact: Your Move Anscombs

Phone: 01904 621532