Top lock cottage for sale at Watford Locks - would suit gardener with designs

A cottage at the top of the Watford Locks, on the GU Leicester Line, is  for sale by auction on 9th December, courtesy of BW's favoured auctioneers, Fisher-German of Banbury. 

Details here.   Google Maps satellite view here.   It says:

A charming detached former lock keepers cottage, in need of updating, overlooking the noteable Watford Locks and set in an elevated rural location.

Marina Cottage is an attractive detached brick under slate cottage requiring modernisation. It is situated within a Conservation Area. The original part of the cottage provides two reception rooms both with feature fireplaces and two bedrooms above, and has been extended to the side to add a bathroom and cloakroom and to the rear to provide a kitchen and utility room with two further bedrooms above. There is vehicular access to the cottage via a private drive (see site plan) and parking to the side of the property.

Guide price £150,000 to £200,000

BW continues selling its waterside cottages, and while I have no real view on whether it's good move to 'offload the portfolio', I do worry about any existing tenants losing their homes.  (I'm not sure if this is a BW sale, but Fisher German are their preferred auctioneers, so I guess it must be.)

The nearby Watford Bottom Lock cottage sold earlier this year, for considerably less than its £180,000 estimate (it fetched only 150k).   I wrote about it in Watford Bottom Lock Cottage is ideal for hard-of-hearing wizarding grannies. 

Marina Cottage does have a lovely location.  The photo in the sale particulars doesn't really show the view from the house, and just makes it look like it's overlooking a canal, when in reality that is just the first of a series of side ponds, cascading down the hill.  If you were to look out from the cottage's upstairs windows I'd imagine they looked a bit like aquatic terraces. 

Oh, WHAT a lovely garden this would make!  Marina Cottage deserves a resident with green thumbs, one who'd love to help turn the overgrown lockside ponds into a floral garden that would become the waterways equivalent of The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Of course, BW will probably ring-fence the sale with regulations, warning that the side ponds are the mandate of the local lock-keepers, and that the lock keepers are supposed to do nothing more than mow and dredge.

But with the future of the waterways being volunteering, I do hope the new owners buy the house for its vista and its gardening potential, not just its resale value.

Comments

[Andrew Denny]

Good point, Nick, I never thought of that! Maybe BW Marinas Ltd knows something we don't!

[Nick]

I wonder if it ever had a name when it was lockkeeper's cottage. It surely hasn't been called "Marina Cottage" for very long.

It's not even particularly near a marina is it?

[Andrew Denny]

Bruce, they probably won't say too much about it, but it's already mentioned on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8361059.stm

The spin from BW is that DEFRA is in our corner and The Treasury is the 26 stone 7 foot giant in the other, with an unreachable (but delicate) head.

Sent from my iPhone

[Andrew Denny]

Adam, as I mentioned in my previous post, it's a great location for hard of hearing people!

Sent from my iPhone

[Bruce Napier]

Nigel Stanley on canals-list reports that the Beeb is running a story on the Politics Show today about BW coming under pressure to sell its property portfolio.

Can't find anything on the Beeb website about it.

Bruce

[Adam]

"Elevated rural location", as long as you ignore the M1 running noisily close by.

[Brian]

The side pounds look quite different now, all the "weeds" have been dredged out.
You say the bottom cottage has been sold, it still looked very empty last week.